


Citadel Nights

by Tyellas



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bad Dirty Talk, Body Horror, Bondage, Breeding, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, Cunnilingus, Disabled Character, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Feminism vs the Wasteland, Femslash, Fisting, Friendship, Gun Kink, Het, Lactation, Leather, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mouth Kink, Oral Sex, Original Character(s), Porn With Plot, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Rough Sex, Sex Work, Size Difference, Slash, Teratophilia, Trans Character, Tropes, Voyeurism, Worldbuilding, happy healthy Citadel, here for Furiosa/Max see ch 22, here for Vuvalini femslash see ch 12, let's be clear: body horror overlapping with sex, some bugs get eaten, trust play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-07-26 04:46:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 34
Words: 94,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7560889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Fury Road, the changed Citadel is the best place in the Wasteland to be a woman - but it’s still uneasy to be a former Wretch there. Tough temptress Desperate made it into the Citadel four days before the Sisters’ revolution. Now, she’s living down to her name to keep her status as a Milking Mother. For her to get bred up again, only the most fierce fighters will do. She taps another former Wretch, gifted yet afflicted Rabbit, for her Gastown connections. And the resulting deal and wild nights take both women to the edge of the new Citadel’s laws...</p><p>A tale of Citadel high life and Wasteland erotics. Of breeders and bait, Polecats and sharpshooters, compelling grotesques - and what it takes to believe a new world is on its way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Desperate living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate fits into the harsh world of the Immortan's Citadel, just in time for that world to change beyond reckoning.
> 
> NOTE: Did you come here for a specific kink tag? Check out the story's [Kink Index to find chapters that include it.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7560889/chapters/27772584)

She remembered how it all began, the day she arrived.

The Citadel had towered above them all.

She had traced across the sand, searing before noonday, and joined the Wretched mob. Proving herself tough enough to not be cast back into the desert started her first fight. Warding off what they called her when she asked questions brought on her second. Ten minutes after asking a cluster of filthy survivors what she wanted to know, she was straddling that fight's loser, twisting a lumpy ear between her fingers, and saying, "Who's desperate now?"

"You! You are!" the loser moaned, in confused surrender. The many watchers laughed.

She had stood up, kicked her opponent in the side, and glared about. "Fine, then. I'm Desperate. And I'll make it up into the Citadel before you do." 

After that, it still took hours to find someone who would speak to her. When she did, the words she heard seared like acid.

“The Immortan won’t have you.”

Desperate glared in fury at the horrible old woman issuing this decree. “Why not? I’m fertile. Hardly any lumps.”

The old woman shook her white hair, her endless tiny tattoos flickering like flies. What had they said she was called? The History Woman. “He’ll take me before he takes you.” She traced the lines of ink on one side of her own face, mirroring Desperate’s chief weakness: her suppurating jawline. “That psoriasis, or fungal infection, or…I’m sorry. The end of the world hasn’t been good to any of us.”

“It’s never stopped anyone before,” Desperate said, fighting down the urge to itch.

“She ith pretty,” lisped a ragged girl, face hidden in the History Woman’s shadow.

“For here and now.” The old woman turned back to Desperate. “The Immortan would do better to take you. A woman, willing, strong, and proven. But he won’t. He only takes girls. With little regard for those qualities. Particularly the first.”

Desperate pointed a dirty hand at the old woman’s companion. “Like her, there? You going to sell her to the Treadmill?”

“No.” The girl turned out of the shadow. The mouth on her – Desperate stepped back, shielding her own face, in case it was contagious.

The old woman weighed her reaction. “Give yourself time. Watch and listen. The first days here, amongst us Wretched, it’s hard. You’re rather well spoken. Where are you from?”

“It doesn’t matter. There’s no going back there, and I’m not staying down here. This is hell. Maggots and filth!  I want to live, as a woman, not…” Desperate forced her eyes off the girl’s cleft lip, the glimpse of where teeth blended with skull. “Some…thing.”

“So do we. All of us,” the old woman said, pointedly. “We’re trying to be human down here.”

“How else do you make it up? They said you knew everything. Tell me!”

The History Woman tilted her head and mused, “You didn’t like my previous advice.”

“Nobody else here helps,” Desperate had to admit. When the old woman stayed silent, hushing the girl, Desperate sensed the answers waiting inside them. She reached into her bundle and drew out two fragments of bean bar. “It’s all I can spare.”

“Done,” the old woman said, taking them. She handled the food with remarkable restraint: tucked one fragment into a tattered pocket, passed the other one to the girl. “Can you make? Craft?”

Desperate had to admit she couldn’t.

The History Woman intoned, “Then there is only one way for you to ascend the Citadel. Be the breeder the Citadel would make you. Get pregnant. You can offer a child born whole to the Treadmill – and yourself with him or her, as a milker or a breeder. No milk, no child, no path above. Fail up there, they throw you out a long drop.” She added, wearily, “Try and attach yourself to one of the Mongrels. Everyone in that gang has survived their rite of passage, the blood fight, killing someone else. That way you might get enough food and water to bring a pregnancy to term while living this Wretched life. May I say that it depresses me, what we’ve sunk to, that this is the best advice I have for you.”

Desperate nearly laughed with relief. There was a way. It was the same way that had kept her alive so far: sex and violence. “I’ll do both – win a place in that gang and have a child. I’ll make it here and I’ll make it up. You’ll see.”

“I suppose I will,” the History Woman said.

They all glanced towards the sound of vehicles. Something was happening. The great masses of Wretched had begun to move. A child dashed by, screaming. It clung to the History Woman for a moment. “Gastown! Big man! Polecats!”

Desperate watched the hag and the girl exchange a look. The girl covered her mouth and fled in the opposite direction. The History Woman called, “A final word. Us Wretched hover here instead of around Gastown for many reasons. The main one is on his way now. The People Eater is from my time. He remembers what I do. And he’s chosen to become a cannibal terror, even by Wretched standards. He’ll take a Wretch from the crowd, once in a while – and throw them down in the desert to hunt them. Avoid the Treadmill today.” With that, she followed the girl, more slowly.

Four days later, the improbable news went around the Wretched mobs. The Immortan’s men had snatched the History Woman, alive and kicking, for purposes unknown. For a few days there was a spate of ambitious old women posing by the Treadmill. Then, most of the Wretched forgot her.

Most of them. 

Afterwards, whenever Desperate saw the cleft-mouthed girl, she remembered the old woman’s foretelling. The girl's name seemed to be Rabbit. Des usually glimpsed Rabbit skittering away from a fight, or listening to the old woman’s counterpart, the History Man. As if his useless stories and rants could do anybody any good. Still, if that afflicted nobody could stay alive, Desperate was determined to live and thrive.

She had followed the History Woman’s advice to the edge of the Treadmill, and onto it.

In time for the Citadel’s revolution…


	2. The high life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fourteen months after the Fury Road, an uplifted former Wretch takes an evening to enjoy a happy, healthy Citadel - while it still stands. For she knows the Citadel's secrets....
> 
>  _Chapter warnings:_ None, this chapter is gen.

The Citadel plunged below her.

To Rabbit, being at this verdant height of the Citadel, part of its people, was still exciting. Hard to believe, even after fourteen months of their new rulers, the Sisters and their Council.

The main garden level of the Citadel’s Green Tower was a busy place on this spring night. The public garden spaces were bustling with clusters of friends and families, chosen and reunited.

A light in the corner of her eye drew Rabbit’s gaze from the small tableaus around her to something larger. She looked up to the night sky. One of the enduring satellites the History Woman had told about was moving through the heavens. Its path crossed the moon, close to the full, low on the horizon. It progressed up, to lose its sparkle amongst the tremendous, luminous arc of the Milky Way.  The sky’s vast beauty, clearer from up here, gave her chills.

Rabbit turned to point out the satellite and the path of stars to the two children with her - but they weren’t there. Her first thought, after life among the Wretched, was that they had been snatched away. Panic stabbed her. This place had trusted her – with tools and knowing and its perfect, adorable children, and she’d _failed_ – until ten seconds of scanning found them. She stayed terrified. They were closer than she was to the Citadel’s edge. Rabbit darted over. “Don’t go too near. You’ll fall and die!”

Another Citadel woman minding a child directed a glare at Rabbit. A former breeder, by her plump prettiness. Well…they would fall and die if they went too close to the edge. _You’ll go over_ was a gentler thing to say. But the last word of it would catch her lisp.

Rabbit caught up to the pair. Her Citadel pup, Spark, was trying to peer down. He took Rabbit’s hand with perfect trust and asked, “How far are we from the ground?”

Rabbit tried to raise her soft voice, to be heard through her half-mask. “A thouthand and eighty-six meters. And you’re a meter. Of you! One more look, then come back.”

The other child, Calafia, said, “My Citadel mum holds us on her shoulders to see more.” Most Citadel children now had a woman in their parenting circle, for extra care and to dilute the lingering past. There was such a need, thought Rabbit, that they'd even accepted someone like her for this. Feeling lucky, Rabbit herded Spark and Calafia away. Her heart began to slow. The height was a long way from being Wretched, and it wasn’t, at all.

Rabbit had taken her Citadel pup to hear the Tells at the top of the Citadel. Now that they were done, she craved a quiet moment. The place she wanted to go, the garden pergola that had become a shrine to the History Woman, was surrounded. Cheedo, the youngest and kindest of the Sisters, had set herself up there to trim and braid Pups’ hair. Spark clung to stripes of white clay and got his head shaved every week by the man who parented him most of the time. Calafia saw the line and declared that she wanted her hair braided. Spark was happy to follow her. Rabbit trailed the pair by an arm’s length, a kindly, silent shadow.

Calafia pointed at her own Citadel mum: the youngest of the Vuvalini, sharpshooter Smith, roughhousing with three more children. “I want a braid like my Citadel mum.” She added, proudly, “My Citadel mum has a gun.”

Spark rose to the challenge. “Oh yeah? My Citadel mum is Wretched like I used to be and she can _eat_ your mum.”

Calafia replied, “My mum is Vuvaluvalovini and she helped kill the Immortan and she’s chrome handsome!”

“My mum is so ugly she can put a curse on you and she has to wear a mask!”

The children peered at Rabbit. Rabbit lowered her gaze, pretending to be absorbed in thought. Calafia said, “I don’t believe you. She has a mask over her mouth but she looks boring.” 

Spark pouted. “It’s true! Her mouth is all…hnnngh. It’s called a cleft palate and it’s a fukushima mutation. A real one!”

They were at the front of the line, now. Smith had sauntered up during this and listened, frowning. “Hey, you pups. Stay polite to Spark’s mum.” Cheedo’s lovely face crumpled in concern. Their witnessing distressed Rabbit far more than the children’s comments.

She and Cheedo were the same age, eighteen oldyears. Born in one of the Citadel’s gardens, Cheedo was dark and golden, a full-life of impeccable beauty. She was a good head taller than Rabbit, lissom while Rabbit remained wiry. Fate had chosen Cheedo for adventure and power. Today, her sweet, clear voice spoke for the Citadel in diplomacy. Cheedo felt terrible about how the Immortan had treated the Wretched. She would try and make up for thirty years of the Immortan’s cruelty – all at once.

After plaiting Calafia’s hair (and subtly checking the child for lice or other illnesses) Cheedo turned to Rabbit. “Sit down here, and I’ll trim your hair, too. And I’ll do your eyes. You have beautiful eyes. Really beautiful!” Rabbit did was she was used to doing  when confronted with Citadel force: she surrendered. As soon as she sat down, Cheedo’s scissors flew and darted. Rabbit tried very hard to not flinch.

Smith complicated this by sitting beside her. “Sometimes pups suck. Yesterday that one of mine used a bunch of curses even I’ve never heard before.” She leaned in. “So don’t let them get to you. I’ll have a word with mine later. No worries?”

This was kind, if ridiculous, after what Rabbit’s life had been with her cleft lip. As she shut her eyes for Cheedo’s brushes, she said, “But it’th true…” Her cleft palate distorted her voice into a soft lisp. Her speech was always a step behind her flowing thoughts.

“Don’t say it, Rabbit!” Cheedo gave her a quick hug from behind, making Rabbit freeze. “You’re smart enough to work with Corpus and the pups love your drawings and you were one of Miss Giddy’s students on the ground just like us Sisters were her students in the Vault – and, here, look.” Cheedo flourished a hand mirror.

Rabbit couldn’t tell what Cheedo had done, but her hair did look fresher and fuller. The soft brown waves were never tidy, being at an awkward stage, not properly short while not long enough to braid. Cheedo had edged Rabbit’s eyelids in a fine line of black, a veil of gold dust powdering the lids, warming her dark brown irises. She had never looked better. As long as she kept her mask on.

On Rabbit’s other side, another woman plunked herself down. “Me next, Cheedo. Trim up my ends like your own,” she demanded.

“Okay! Are you still a Milking Mother?”

“Mmmmm…this month. Rabbit, I need to talk to you about that.” The new woman elbowed her.

This was Des, short for Desperate. Rabbit had always been impressed by her. She had been a name among the Wretched: canny, available for a high price, often accused of thieving but never caught, one of the few women to have won a Mongrel blood fight. Despite this, Des had still had an occasional word for Rabbit, when most Wretched of her status avoided the low and afflicted. Des had capped her Wretched achievements by being chosen for the Citadel as a milker. Citadel living had done her well. To Rabbit's eyes, Des was beautiful now, less like the other Milking Mothers than the Sisters: lean but sleek, except for her curving hips and full, heavy bust. When Cheedo finished the trim, Des flipped her long hair back with a satisfied smile. Her hair was lush and darkly tawny, fanning over her lumps and scars, framing her wild, wide green eyes.

Des stuck to Rabbit and Smith when they left the pergola. “Rabbit, I hear there’s a Gastown crew coming. To the Green Tower. Corpus and the Pumps team will be with them, right?” Des smiled, knowingly.

Rabbit nodded. “I’m sssuppothed to copy their geological mapth.”

She knew the Citadel's secrets: its windmills and wires, its stony depths, its pipes and its hidden Wellhead. She had ascended the Citadel with a mind alive with the History People’s teaching, the ways of thinking Corpus called _science_. Citadel books and her work on the vital Pumps team had shown her how much more there was to learn. Tonight, she knew the reason why the Gastown crew was coming. And her heart nearly stopped at the risk of it.

Gastown’s Worksman and drillers were coming to try and get more depth out of the Citadel’s well. As it was, the minds of the Pumps team had declared there would be enough water for a hundred and fifty oldyears.  If the well could touch deeper water, underground, there might be a hundred additional years of Citadel. Four more generations for the Citadel to flourish, two hundred and fifty years to keep the peace and explore. Rabbit wondered if it might help the Wasteland become a living world again, as the History Woman’s last words had forseen.

If this didn’t work, the Citadel was seriously schlanged.

Rabbit didn’t know where to begin with the enormity of this. She had gone out to enjoy the peace of a happy, healthy Citadel while it still stood. Des wasn’t asking why. “If any of the Gastown crew look like prime breeders, send them my way. You know my type, big strong ones. I need to get bred up again and fast.”

“But – but you don’t hath to!” said Rabbit, shocked. “We aren’t thingth.”

Des waved this off. “Being a Milking Mother is the best I’ve ever had it in the Wasteland. My milk’s down to the minimum.” She added, “I’ve tried every full-life in this place who was up for it. Repair Boys. Treadmill guards. Treadmill rats. Green thumbs. Battler.”

Rabbit and Smith declared, with the same note of horror, “Battler?”

Des gave them both a stare. “I stop at nothing to get what I want.”

Smith cleared her throat. “Gastown men? Most of them pair up with each other. Those are all right, they’re the sane ones. Any fighters coming are probably Polecats. And Polecats are _psychotic._ ”

Des sniped, “Someone’s used to soft living. I haven’t seen the man alive who’d scare me – or who didn’t want me.” Des tossed her trimmed mane over her shoulders, defiantly.

Rabbit felt obliged to point out, “You don’t hath to go with anyone now, Deth.” Des flinched as Rabbit’s lisp twisted her name. “Ith you want a child on your own, the Inthirmary doeth the…“ _artificial insemination_ was a lisp-trap, but Rabbit didn’t have to say it.

Des rolled her eyes. “They pick some bloke whose lumps are the opposite of yours and spoon it in you. Like that’ll work. They call it freedom and say it’s science. But look what science did to all of us.” Smith went severe and breathed, _hmph_ , whether in warning or agreement, it was hard to tell. Des didn’t back down. “Tell me at dinner tomorrow if you see any live ones.” With that, Des went. Her sashay was broken only when she cast an anxious look back at Rabbit.

“You don’t have to do it just because she asks,” Smith said. “Don’t let her pressure you.”

Rabbit bowed her head. “I’ll go find my pup.” She slipped away. Smith was Vuvalini, one of the Imperator’s tribe, tall and armed and fierce. She didn’t know what it was like to be Wretched in the Citadel. Rabbit did. For thirty oldyears, longer than she’d been alive, the Immortan threw you out at will. What if they all changed their mind here tomorrow? Especially if there was a problem with the water? How would the Wretched still on the ground, the ones around the edges, too tribal or violent to change for Citadel law, react?

Without a Citadel brand, the back of Rabbit’s neck felt naked. Desperate had that, but tonight, she had asked for help. Rabbit resolved that she would give it. After all, the History Woman had helped Desperate before.

Even now, there were the Wretched who had been deemed fit under the Immortan’s regime, like Des, and the afflicted like Rabbit, who would never have ascended without the Sisters and Furiosa. What Rabbit remembered about her first uplifted days was not the bullying and challenges. Those were so mild after life among the Wretched that her still resilience, reinforced by her cleft-lipped snarl, came across as toughness. It was those who doled out studied kindness, their eyes sliding away. She’d been given a room of her own rather quickly. When she’d started wearing an old half-mask she’d found, she noticed immediately that people talked to her more.

In that mask, six months back, Rabbit had caught the eye of a visitor from Gastown. With men as beautiful as him around, she absolutely believed Gastown men wouldn’t look at anybody else. The two of them had done a deal, his sleek respirator mask for her help in tracking down one of the Citadel’s fighting ferals. He’d probably glimpsed her cleft lip along the way – but he’d stayed friendly. After Smith’s words, Rabbit wasn’t sure whether to feel better or worse about her passionate crush on him. It didn’t matter, she told herself: she’d probably never see him again.

Looking around for Spark, Rabbit paused. The History Man was within sight. She would have liked to talk to him briefly, to take heart about the works and the risks, but he was talking to one of the men still called War Boys. Rabbit kept her distance from them unless she was carrying her Pumps Team pass and wearing her tool belt.

As Rabbit hesitated, Spark scurried up to her. His face was crumpled as he tugged on her, silently. “What ith it?” Spark looked even more upset. Rabbit knelt. “Can you tell me?” she asked, in her softest voice.

Spark bowed his hot forehead into her shoulder. “Calafia said – she said I’m not a boy because l have girl parts and I haven’t had the T-shots from the ‘nfirmary and – and that I should be a girl like she is and we’d be Vuvalini when we’re big – but I’m not a girl, I’m _not_ , I don’t feel like it – “

Rabbit looped a light arm around the overwrought child. “You’re a boy. It’s your sssoul, becauthe you sssaid it. Give it time. Do you want to go to my room now? I’ll draw for you. Remember, I won’t sssee you for a while, I’ll be working.” Though she’d be drawing without cease over the next few days, drawing to make a child smile was one of her pleasures.

“Can you draw me in a car with six wheels and a flamethrower? And I want my bro Jumper in it too.” They left, side by side. Rabbit felt for the child, born to one gender but feeling another.  She, herself, wanted to be a woman, refined and helpful as the History Woman had been, not that-Wretched-with-the-harelip. Comparing herself to Cheedo and Des, that felt very far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rabbit got her current mask - and made a Gastown friend - in an earlier story in my 'verse, [Scav Hunt.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5609476)
> 
> Rabbit's first appearance was in the very first scene of [Weave a Circle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4229832), where we see her with Miss Giddy among the Wretched. You can read about a day in her pre-Citadel existence, [A Wretched Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6350671), and a short piece about her Citadel time, [Desert Faces.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4591761/chapters/10839572)


	3. Blood will tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate’s take on Citadel privilege and enduring Wasteland ruthlessness.  
> Notes: Genfic chapter.

Before leaving the Citadel’s gardens, Des cast a last glance back at Rabbit. That girl had been a Wretched starveling too long. She still braced her spindly self like the whole world was about to strike her. It had come to something, all right, if Des was asking her for help.

That something was the Citadel. The place that turned everything upside-down, that carved refuge and sanity out of the Wasteland. That had let Des become the woman she’d yearned to be: beautiful, strong, and desired.

Desperate had done well enough among the Wretched to live for two oldyears, bartering her favors more often than she was raped. She had won her blood fight and carried the son of a fellow Mongrel to term. That man had died, but she had achieved her goal, being uplifted into the Citadel in some way, as a milker.  For three days she had lived in triumph, fed and clean, eyed by men, spoken to by women, learning the ways of the Milking Mothers, wondering what might happen when the Immortan laid eyes on her. The sad, kind women had shaken their braided heads when she'd named herself and shortened her call to Des.

On the fourth day, the Sisters returned from the Fury Road. Des had gotten carried away supporting the Mothers’ rebellion to join them, shocking Citadel guards back with bared teeth and battle yells. Everything had changed. Des, who had scarcely begun to settle, had taken the changes in stride. 

Now, Des felt her brief luck running out, her full Wretched name waiting.

She struggled with the new Citadel’s tasks for the Milking Mothers. Half of them had left off giving milk; all of them were considered people, worthy of the power they’d seized. Their elevated work required shared knowing from other women, how to knit or sharpshoot, read or calculate, wrangle resources. Their consideration of every issue from all sides seemed deep, at first. Later, it made her feel sharp and impatient. Following the Sisters’ lead, they were all preoccupied with being right, when the howling wastes outside called only for survival.

The constant presence of children made Des’ mind throb, but she didn’t dare shut them out. She was still giving milk, barely, after fourteen months. An infant was waiting for what she had. Des headed to the Infirmary, to take up her duty as a frail child’s night nurse.

As she started, Des curled her lip, walking by a scene that was supposed to be delightful. One of the Citadel’s half-life men still called War Boys, arms and head messily half-painted by some child, warded the child himself. The old History Man spoke to them both. The History Man was pointing at white letters on the stone wall. “Can you read that for your big brother, like Corpus taught you?”

Des could only look at the letters for a few seconds: they swam and swapped around. The child didn’t seem to have this problem, spelling out, “No…Unnecessary…Killing.”

“Absolutely! That’s a big word in the middle, but you’ve got it.”

The War Boy radiated pride, then half-knelt. The boy jumped up to ride him piggy-back. “You done chrome. Bunk time. Later, History.”

As she went past, History saluted her. “What’s the story, Des?”

“None of your business, old man,” she said.

“It might be, tonight. Have you heard about the ruckus brewing in our Citadel courtyard, between the Mongrels and the Lepers?” In the night shadows, his aged face was riven deep. They had both been Wretched. She understood what he meant. She had been a Mongrel, once: she might be able to help with faction problems on the Citadel ground.

Des shifted her trimmed mane. “It’s nothing to do with me. I'm Citadel, now.”

“They are, too, now. _Wordburger: For all have sinned and fall short_.”

Desperate went cold. It used to be that, if you were taken for the Citadel, you left your Wretched past behind on the ground, became a new person. That changed the day of the Citadel’s revolution, when they’d brought the History Man up from the Wretched. He remembered everything and everyone. He had been nearby when she’d been taken for the Treadmill. If he had seen her choice then, and chose to Tell it, in this era of being good and right…

Did she need to kill History?

No, she decided. It wasn’t necessary. Yet.

She turned on her heel and descended into the darkness of the Citadel’s night tunnels.

Oh, people still vanished here. She knew the Citadel's secrets: its bribes and bunkmates, blood fights and betting rings, what was huffed and swapped and begged for, the dark corners where two men entered and one man left. Her own dirty deals had unlocked these shadows to her. Des had come up into the Citadel with nothing but the rags on her back. She had bartered away her few possessions for a valued place at the edge of the Treadmill to try her piece on the Treadmill guards, determined to claw everything back. And she had. She knew what she could earn with her body and image, the worth of every act she was prepared to perform.

The Infirmary was in the Citadel’s middle tower, the Seige Tower. It was in the Seige Tower’s tunnels that Des ran into a knot of fighters. They saw her coming in the tunnel darkness first, swaying towards them in her pale wraps.

The first one to turn was a War Boy. “It’s a ghost Wife. Fukushima!”

The second was a full-life guard, with hood and scythe. “That one’s no ghost. She’s flesh and blood. Oi, you little beauty! Did you fall out of your garden? I think they’re missing a Sister!”

The War Boy laughed in relief. “Shiny and chrome!” He made her a clumsy V8. Des blew him a kiss to see him blush under his half-paint. Maybe she’d risk a half-life lover once she was pregnant again. Not before that, though.

The third fighter, a bullet-headed feral recruit, scowled at her. “Cool your engines. I don’t like it when my woman acts like that.”

Des peered around dramatically. “That’s a shame, Battler. Where is she? I don’t see her anywhere!” The other two men laughed. “I told you we were done. I meant it. Back off.”

“I’m’a fighter! I’ll look after ya.” Battler ruined this by whining, “What’d I _do_?”

“More what you didn’t do,” Des purred. “You’re a fighter, yes, but no breeder.” The other two men howled.

Battler went dangerously dark to bluster, “Maybe it wasn’t me.”

“Think I was born yesterday? Liars, the lot of you!” Again, she fled, leaving two out of the three falling over laughing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the old-school guard holding Battler back.

The encounter confirmed what her hard life had taught her. There was no safer place in the remains of the world to be a woman than this Citadel, today.

In her Wasteland years, willingness to open her legs had kept her alive more times than she could count. Whenever she'd lured someone into her arms, it was a victory: she had bought herself an ally, supplies, her life. For her thousand mates, sex had been the only reliable pleasure in the dead world.  Here in the Citadel, amongst the Mothers, she’d honed it. The former Wives become Milkers had learned a hundred tricks to get the Immortan off. In the new, freer era, they’d joked and shared about them. Thanks to the revolution, Des had been free to practice them on eager men reclaiming their own lives.

Des came to the Infirmary. She passed by its old blood bay. Its niches were now softened with whatever fabric could be scavenged, shielding bodies on the brink of death or new life: the dying and those about to give birth. Here, any woman breeding received a helping hand, not just the concubines of the elite. She picked out the pregnant women’s protected niches, calm and dim. She would have killed for that, in her last pregnancy.

Night nursing kept your milk going. Des had volunteered for it for that reason, and been matched these past ten days with a struggling infant, born too early. As she strode towards the Infirmary’s nursery, the lead healer for the night came to her: Gillian, one of the Vuvalini. Citadel life had been good to her, too, polishing her age with grace and sleekness. But tonight her brown face was weary, and her silver braids straggled. “Oh, Des. Didn’t the message reach you? This place is such a warren. I’m so sorry. The poor little baby died.”

Desperate went still. “You don’t need me any more.”

Gillian’s eyes were deep and knowing, like her gentle voice. “You’ve been giving your milk for four hundred days. And you’ve been splendid taking on all these nights. We need time to heal, body and soul.” Gillian chalked a message on a slate and handed it to her. “There. Four days to rest up, spend some time in the gardens. Let Tidda know. You can talk to the Mothers about something fresh to do, but not just yet. Get a few good nights' sleep, first.” Was this a jab at her activities lately? Des stiffened.

Gillian said, blearily, “I’m upset, too. It’s always hard.”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” Des said. It did not occur to her that the other woman was waiting to give her a consoling embrace. She left.

She walked Citadel paths, blind with self-absorption, until she was back in her own room. This space had come to her through the Milking Mothers. It had once been the niche where past Milking Mothers had been re-bred against their will. Other women had rejected it: Des had snatched it up. She had never had a room of her own. It was intimately small, just large enough for one of the iron bedsteads the Sisters hadn’t wanted to see again after the Vault. Des had bartered amongst other women with what she’d been given (or earned), one coverlet for another, until everything in the room was beige, cream, white.

Des had also persuaded two stonecutters to enlarge the ventilation slit into a real window. They’d been ugly, but fit, the pair of them. She’d compensated them fair with the kind of Wasteland deal you weren’t supposed to do. She hadn’t seen them since, amidst the Citadel’s vastness. Like the other former Wretched, they took it as it came, let it go. They didn’t get possessive, not like Wasteland men. There was something to be said for that. It meant that nobody had to be reliable.

Des drank in her white bower, then completed her indulgences by locking her door. She put the slate Gillian had handed her, with its incomprehensible, valuable ciphers, to one side. Then she curled up cross-legged on her bed, pulled her thick hair forwards to let it curtain her.

She’d been warned coming up that a Milking Mother’s years were few. She’d been told after the revolution that she could do anything. She’d seen that wasn’t truly the case. What she wanted was at least one more round of this security, after so little. She missed being tightly woven into the net of other milking women. She’d distanced herself from them lately, sleeping during the day to do the night nursing, trying to get bred up again on other nights. Lovers and friends, she’d learned in the Wasteland, did not mix well.

Des shoved away bitter memories. Right now, she was a lover. Healthy, strong as she could be, dressed in clean cream cotton, with this moonlit perch for her mates – if she wasn’t in the mood for forbidden embraces in barracks, garages, gardens, balconies. She had bartered her favors out to the Citadel’s men these past three moons in the hope of a protected pregnancy, then more time as a milker. But it seemed the Immortan hadn’t been the only impotent old man here. She’d been squandering herself, instead.

That meant she might lose all this, or, worse, lose part: move out into a dormitory warren as one of the Citadel’s lowest castes, the treadmill stampers, stone-gnawers, tunnel rats who answered to Corpus. She shuddered at the thought of having to take orders from that living horror, like Rabbit did. Another round of time as a Milking Mother was another chance to ward that off. And having a child by a strong fighter meant the child could grow to be more than low-caste labor. Best of all, in the new Citadel, the child would have that chance whatever was between its legs. As long as the strength and health was there.

Des brooded. One minute, she’d think about keeping the child: the next, about handing it over to the hundred open arms that waited here. The way she’d felt about her first child had been a mistake, in the deadly Wasteland. Her second had been the kind of stillborn to make you cry in the night, nothing visibly wrong. The third, she’d tried to ward off the worst, claiming he had a warrior’s heart. When the Treadmill guard said he wouldn’t live the year, she’d done what she had to do…

The infant would have been dead by now. She had, she told herself, no regrets.

Desperate didn’t trust the Infirmary’s science, but she had to know. Would she have a child again, soon? What would come to her? She drew a pin out of her wraps and stabbed the palm of her left hand. She did not flinch. For the count of nine, she let it bleed. She smacked that palm against her other hand, to read the shape of the blood mark.

Her eyes widened. The mark was clear, perfect on both hands.

An erection.

Reckless laughter took her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Verse notes: Desperate's on her best behavior in another story of mine, [Aim High, Shoot Low](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5487950) before a gun safety and shooting lesson with Smith of the Vuvalini.


	4. The worst war boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two men each seek to match the template of Citadel masculinity. 
> 
> Notes: A smut chapter with light D/s, M/M sex, and transman appreciation.

In the darkest hour of the night, the man’s voice echoed in the heart of the Citadel’s war tower. “We’ll make a War Boy of you!”

The younger man kneeling in front of him felt cold as the scissors, then the razor, claimed his hair. “I had that extremely shine. Sir.”

“Quiet. Let me take it.” A firm, expert hand caressed his head, bowed it down. He acceded to the rough, sensuous weight. It was irresistible. Soon, the shave was complete.

“The Citadel awaits. Leave your old self behind and become…a face of death in life…ready for Valhalla.” The first touch of white clay carried the chill of ritual, a stripe down his forehead, caressing his lips, his throat, ending over his heart.

“AHAHOOHOOHOOOO that tickles!”

The established Citadel man laughed, too, and put down the white clay. “Ballard. Work with me! You want to get rumbled and sent back to Gastown, or not?”

Ballard was kneeling with his shirt off in the middle of the Wire Box, the Citadel’s electrical workshop. Jumper, the leading electrical Repair Boy, was the one taking him deeper into Citadel life tonight. Ballard glanced down. The white clay was crazy different from his own brown skin. It had been one thing to escape Gastown’s Refinery, run away from that pampered but ruthless indenture to try and find a new life. Abandoning his own skin was far stranger.

“It’s been four hundred and more days since the Immortan got shredded. Hardly any of you white up anymore. Surely I’m different enough now.”

Jumper snorted. “Tonight, everyone’s reaching for the clay again. Ready to prove they aren’t Gastown when that crew shows up tomorrow. You talked your way out of being turned in for a bounty one time. If you want to stay, you’d better clay.”

Ballard knew whoever turned him in to Gastown would be rewarded. Ballard himself, after an interrogation designed to scar his soul, would have his legs’ tendons slit. He and his gasworks education would be trapped amidst Gastown’s machinations for life. Every day would be twice the struggle for success and survival it had been before he’d run.

At first, compared to Gastown, the Citadel’s inhabitants had seemed dim-witted. Eventually Ballard had realized this was because they weren’t eternally second-guessing and vying. They trusted each other. It was one of many reasons to stay, though the place was much, much too close to Gastown.

Jumper was another reason. Ballard had made his way inside the Citadel by pretending to be a feral fighter. That meant he’d had to play dumb to get a look inside the Wire Box. When he did, he’d liked what he saw. To his eyes, Jumper, who ran the place, was the ideal Citadel man. Skilled, appealingly mature, able to shout down an idiotic crew one moment, parent his Citadel pup, Spark, the next. He had terse, useful answers to Ballard’s questions. His cool eyes, piercing gray-blue like so many of the War Boys here, matched the steely flecks in his unusual facial hair.

Ballard gave Jumper a boyish, beseeching look. Delaying, he asked, “How did you white up every day for so long? ‘Specially with how…different you are.”

Hanging around Jumper to try and firm up his Citadel cover, one confession led to another. Ballard had to fess up to his true past when he couldn’t stand seeing the electrical jobs piling up, begging for pliers to help them. When Jumper let him get back into circuits and solenoids, it had felt like being home again. So had the first time he’d knelt in front of the older man.

There’d been weeks of tension before that happened. Jumper had a confession of his own to make. When he discovered why Jumper was reluctant, Ballard tried to put him at ease. Gastown was a world away from War Boy conformity: the more different, the better, he’d said. Jumper had put him in his place. The conformity had also been a template, one Jumper had perfected in his own shadowed transit, from being called female to living as male. He’d schooled Ballard about that, too,  who he was now and what he wanted from someone like Ballard…

Jumper took a moment to recount. “It was, what, fifteen oldyears after the Citadel had gotten started. Compared to the other cults out there, the place was reasonable. You know I came in passing. Being a War Boy sounded chrome.  Then I saw what happened when a woman or two landed in this crew outside the breeders. It was ugly. It got better for them later, when Furiosa gained rank. Me, I stayed passing. With a little help.”

Jumper ran his free hand absently over his moustache and beard. “The Organic Mechanic … everyone was cutting deals with him and his lab, to get mods, to get juiced. He never asked why you wanted what you did, had a standard bribe for a t-shot. Tits off? He _loved_ that one. I made it worth his while.” He smiled in reminiscence.

Ballard frowned, jealously. “The Gastown flesh mechanic would’ve done the same.”

“Mmmmm. Always had the feeling I’d be shredded there.” Jumper hooked a knee over Ballard’s shoulder, letting his boot rest on Ballard’s back, gently, pulling him close. “Never blamed you for wanting out. That place was always crazy.”

Ballard soaked it up. “I never thought about it that way. Until a Thunderdome three Amnesties back where this nobody scav claimed the victory. He went in there as less than nothing, to walk away with the prize. The Arbiter tried to recruit him on the spot. He said no! Turned it down, left that night. There was something out there for him. I thought, if that nobody could make it out there, on the other side of Gastown’s bridge, maybe I could, too.” He looked up again. “I’m glad I did. Sir.”

Jumper reached down and patted Ballard’s head. “Now I’m missing your hair.” He laughed, then coughed, wiping away a streak of blood. Ballard drew back, alarmed, but Jumper shrugged it off. Lumps along his thyroid moved as he did. “Enh. Half-life. Catches up with you eventually.”

That was the worry about the Citadel. They’d trust themselves to death. “Infirmary. Tomorrow. I bet they won’t recognize me when we’re done.”

Jumper twisted his face in acquiescence. “All right. But you, you stop betting on everything. That’s a Gastown giveaway right there.”

Ballard brushed this off. “If I’ll be all whited up, better finish the fun part of being a War Boy now. Sir.” He slid a brown hand up Jumper’s faded black apron.

Jumper peeled it down with a smile. As he salvaged and remade electronics, so he had remade his body with the Citadel’s rough tools, t-shots and mods and hard work. His bare chest beneath was marked by paired slashed scars, still bearing the traces of rough stitching. His nipples, and any spare flesh, had been eradicated: a chrome mod any War Boy would be proud of. He undid the back and laid the apron and its tools carefully on the bench behind him.

When this was done, Ballard arced down and turned his face against Jumper’s boots. They were rough boots, leather you didn’t ask about hammered into tire soles, staunch on the rough-hewn stone floor. Ballard parted his lips and laved them with his gratitude and respect. Jumper spread his legs with a groan. “You’re the worst boy. A terrible influence. Corrupt…greedy…”

Ballard nuzzled up Jumper’s firm legs, tracing with his hands. Nobody in the Citadel had trousers that fit and Jumper was no exception. It was easy to tug the loose trousers low. What was it the War Boys said? Time to bring home the booty. He cupped Jumper’s left ass cheek in one hand. The flesh was firm, warm beneath smooth, weathered-leather skin. His mouth watered with the urge to get back there and bite. He rolled his face across Jumper’s lower belly, where some body hair blended into pubes, and moaned to show willing.

Jumper ran a hand across Ballard’s head: without hair to pull, he tugged on Ballard’s ear. “Suck my cock, boy.”

None of the slang Ballard knew fit Jumper’s manhood. A schlanger, the pipeworks, the gearstick? His was more a power switch, small but dramatic: a hard spar of sensuous flesh, laved in unique musk. Ballard buried his face in the rough beard of pubes there, seized that waiting cock with his lips. Jumper clamped his head with both hands. A rough, ferocious grip drove his skull, pacing his rhythm. No wonder all the War Boys shaved their heads.

Sex and worship consumed his world, for a time. Everything honed down to a circuit between his hungry, privileged mouth and his own cock, going stiff and electric. He shaped the other’ man’s orgasm with his mouth, seeking a balance between hungry and tender. The spot as right as the niche Jumper had shaped for his life. When he hit it, his entire tongue wet and pressing wide, Jumper jolted like he’d gotten a shock, growled in his throat. Ballard needed no command to keep that up until the growling stopped. He envied how much Jumper enjoyed it, vibrating with an orgasm and a half.

Jumper’s authoritative palm caressed Ballard’s bare head again. He pulled Ballard back from him like a puppy. The touch maddened him as it clenched the back of his neck, covering his Gastown brand. Ballard followed Jumper’s hand, shivering, wishing that the palm print could be seared there, to obscure that other brand forever. Jumper gave Ballard a shake by the nape of his neck. “Tell me what you are.”

Ballard swallowed. This phrase was permission. He dug into his trousers, wrested out his prick.  “I’m your boy, sir. Here for you.” A phrase seared his mind, hot because it was forbidden here. “I’m yours, I belong to you.” It closed the second circuit, emptied him one blissful mindfucked jerk of his hand at a time.

Ballard’s mind was still blank when Jumper dropped to his knees, too, putting them on the same level. “Don’t tempt me. Say you’re from Gastown before you say that too loud.” Their mouths crushed together. Ballard gasped hungrily. Citadel breath, cleaned with salt and herbs, made for the purest kisses in the Wasteland. After he’d given Ballard a good hot case of beard burn, Jumper drew back. He pulled on Ballard’s right earlobe. “What do you say?”

“Thank you, sir.”

Ballard’s knees were hammered. The Wire Box was dim compared to the bright lights of Gastown.  He had to brush past the two-meal-a-day ration pass in his pocket for a saved handful of rags. He cleaned Jumper’s battered boots while the other man rearranged his apron. “Damn shine, boy.” Jumper reached into an apron pocket and drew out a wide red rag, wrapping it around Ballard’s neck, then removing it. “That’ll do to hide the Gastown brand.” Ballard glowed. He resolved that the only way they’d take him back to Gastown was as a corpse for the barbecue.

Jumper shook his head. “Where were we?”

“I’m ready for the clay, sir.”

Jumper pretended to consider, sternly. “Mmmmm, I don’t know. You have transgressed against the honor of the War Tower with your reluctance. As your punishment: this time it goes everywhere.” Jumper reached down for the white clay.

“AHOOHOOHOOOO!”

“I haven’t Joe-damn touched you yet. Worst War Boy ever!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Related stories in my 'verse:
> 
> Ballard's previous appearances are [Gastown Nights](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4515567) and [Scav Hunt](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5609476).
> 
> Jumper wraps up his chest mods and meets Spark in [Mods Day.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4097674/chapters/9240652)


	5. Bait and poison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today Gastown goes to the Citadel - seen through the eyes of Gastown bait.  
> Notes: Genfic chapter.

Silence could hardly wait for this bait job to be over.

He glanced outside the spike-armored military transport. The Wasteland’s dullness shimmered with morning heat. Bikes and Polecat vehicles roared ahead and behind, forming a triple cordon around the central vehicle and the equipment they towed. In the heart of the transport, Silence was perched in the centre row of seats, shirtless, pierced and blonde. He took a metal water bottle and allowed himself a sip, relief for his dry, tongueless mouth. His fair skin would pick up some sun from this journey alone. He was there to tempt any raiders away from the vehicle’s chief passenger, the most valuable man in Gastown: the Worksman.  

On his right, the Worksman ignored Silence’s exposed beauty for a book with a faded spine. He read, absorbed, until the transport thumped over a bad section of road. Then he harrumphed. “Government’s useless since the crisis. Someone should talk to the local council.” Nobody in the vehicle corrected him. The Worksman’s knowing kept Gastown’s refinery going. All of Gastown conspired to shield the old man from the fallen world's harshness. He and his drillers were going to be at the Citadel for four nights, deepening a well. Gastown was going along with this Citadel request purely because the Worksman was intrigued, and anything he wanted, he got.

The guard on his left, clad and masked in black leather, elbowed Silence, murmured for him alone. “Still thinking about my offer? I know you have your…” The guard’s pause was deliberate, poisoned. “Specialties.”

Silence thought fast. He rubbed his fingers together, then mimed spraying something in front of his face.

“You’ll do my scene for chrome.”

Silence smiled poison back at him.

“Schlanger. Then again, we will be at the Citadel. I’ll see.” This was said amiably enough.

Silence leaned back. He was too canny to flatly refuse Force, the chief guard in the Worksman’s personal detail. Chrome was nigh impossible to get, now that the Citadel, with its new leadership, had cut back on producing it. It remained a fair price for enabling Force’s convoluted, sadistic pleasures. Saving himself for the possibility would let Silence fend off the rest of the Gastown crew. They knew what Force was, and feared him.

Silence would need some backup. Save for the core guards and the Refinery trio, the Gastown crew was going to be billeted in the War Tower. He was already restless at the thought. He was doing his best to claw his way up Gastown’s hierarchy. This bait job was a setback - unless he could bring something worthwhile back, information or otherwise.

Stretching a cramped leg, Silence placed a foot against the seat in front. Another guard in the detail turned. “Mmmm! Boots!” Mangler turned and rubbed his face against Silence’s footgear. With a scowl, Silence took his foot back.

The sharpshooter beside Mangler shook his head. “Gastown weirdos.”

Mangler snickered. “Bullet Farm bores. Everyone knows you’ve got only one kink.”

Beside him, Force reached down and smacked Mangler on the back of the head. “Keep it in your pipes.”

A fourth guard, a man-mountain on the other side of the Worksman grunted uneasily. “Fight?”

“No, Brute. No fight now. No. Fight.” said Force, clearly.

“You there.” To Silence’s shock, the Worksman closed the book and turned to him. “You worked for Richard Smith?” The entire crew fell silent at the Before-time name of the People Eater.

Aghast, Silence nodded. Whatever this man wanted was a command.

“You were…the office boy?” The verbal members of the crew each had to suppress a noise. The protected Worksman had to be the only person in Gastown unaware that Silence had survived five years as the People Eater’s sex slave. When the People Eater had grown bored (a mute slave amused him less than he expected) Silence was lent out as human currency, posed as living furniture, or deployed for his owner’s voyeurism. His death while Silence still lived had been a stroke of luck. Today, Silence was indentured to Gastown’s chief leader, the Jade. In exchange for manumission, he served her at need: as bait, messenger, poisoner, or spy.

The Jade had recently estimated his oldyears age as eighteen.

One of the drillers broke the tension. “Yeah. That was him. He, uh, can’t talk and Mr. Smith liked it quiet.”

“You can read?” Silence nodded. It was one of the few things left to him of his life before slavery.

Force coughed. “He’s telling the truth, sir. I see him handing notes to his current boss.”

“Excellent. You will look after the papers. The papers are _extremely_ valuable. Irreplaceable. These geological maps…” The Worksman began a long description. Silence did his best to look earnest, then accepted a folio and a weapon-sized tube with a handle. Somebody at the Citadel would be copying these.  “Prentices too valuable to bring, lucky someone can read. Watch whenever these are out of their cases. Make sure they aren’t swapped for useless things.”

“Whatever you want, sir. Got that?” Force elbowed Silence, who nodded yet again. “Done, sir. Office Boy here is on the job,” Force said, with an amused edge. What it would take to live this down, Silence had no idea. He seethed until he realized that, as Office Boy, he’d be tagging along to the main project in the Green Tower, instead of being billeted in the War Tower. The Green Tower, marked by the Skullmouth, was the heart of the Citadel’s power. Its water, its leaders, and its treasures were secured there. This had potential.

They drew into the Citadel’s courtyard, the space between the three towers. It was increasingly crowded with small, improvised dwellings for the ferals who crowded around. When they pulled up to where the Treadmill drop awaited, the Worksman came to life again, leaning out across Brute to crack open the window.

The Worksman waved the book he’d been reading at a cluster of unsavoury ferals.  “Alan! Good thesis!” Half of the ferals were studded and tattooed, the other half warped with a disease that had afflicted the People Eater: leprosy. The ferals moved to reveal an old man. He was bald and shrunken, as savage-seeming as any of them, covered in small tattoos himself, wearing a humble loincloth: the History Man. Of course he, too, had a Before-time name. Silence flattened himself back. He had more than one reason to not be seen by the shrewd oldster.

All the old man's strength was in his deep, musical voice. “Andrew! Glad the Buzzards didn’t get you. So it was in your archives after all? We’ll talk hydrology soon. I’ve got some, ah, _business_ first.” He waved. The ferals closed around him again. Silence allowed himself to breathe. Luckily, with the Worksman amongst them, they were the first transport up on the Treadmill.

The moment there was space in the vehicle, Silence dragged on his shirt and jacket and the two parts of his new mask. This was the best protection from the elements Gastown’s crafters could assemble. The lower half combined a salvaged respirator, spikes, and black-dyed cannibal’s leather. The upper half, more black leather and spikes, concealed his eyes behind smoked glass and covered his hair. The nape of his neck showed, with the Gastown brand. Only when both halves were secure did he step out into the Treadmill bay. He knew how everyone stared at new arrivals.

Silence had been to the Citadel once before, shadowing negotiations with the Citadel’s new rulers. It had been a breath of freedom and sanity, a day free of his dire reputation as the People Eater’s disease-contaminated toy. The Citadel’s tunnels were opened to him by a Wretch and a deal. They hadn’t found the man Silence had hungered for, the People Eater’s killer, though they had learned his name: Max. To Silence, it had been worth the price, his previous respirator mask. His excitement had even carried over into a brief erotic fascination with the curious Wretch, between a girl and a woman, who had helped him.

But that had been half an oldyear ago. She never did come to Gastown. He’d become absorbed in Gastown’s shifts and machinations, bartering up by every means possible. As he built his name, he clung to Gastown’s one virtue, shared with the Wasteland: dealing clean. This had served him well in a chance Citadel encounter. Accepting the History Man’s irritating limits on a deal had set him up with something beyond price: a dose of the Citadel’s kill-or-cure antibiotic. Thirty days past, Silence had taken the shot, and survived it. If he was free of the People Eater’s taint now – and in a world rife with mutated diseases, he would never be sure – it was because of that.

It was strange, to have a lifespan again.

More, a final Citadel “thing” remained for him to claim from the old man. Now that Silence was going to enter the Citadel’s heart, he had his chance. Between his new mask and his new nickname, he could hide who he was here for at least a day. That was something, time to choose. And he was going to be thrown in with a scribe. Good. He could make himself understood. For everyone, in his experience, had their price.

The Worksman’s coterie took almost an hour to cross the Citadel’s three towers. Along the way, Force wanted another word. “Congratulations on your promotion, Office Boy. Torcher’s in charge of the main crew. She warned me that you did a Citadel walkabout last time you were here.” There was no use denying it. Silence nodded.

“Said you got in with a full-life quim in the Green Tower, one of their cleaned-up Wretched. That is, I guess she was clean, before you got your hands on her.”

It was easy to lie when you couldn’t talk. Silence nodded again, and gave his shoulders a superior tilt.

“Tell me which one so Brute doesn’t catch anything you gave her. She got blue eyes? Green? Brown?” Silence signed assent at the last one. That Wretched girl had brown eyes.

Force sensed some truth and settled down. “That’s all I need to know. This place is mostly whitefellas, so we should be good.”

Mangler leaned over. “Didn’tcha hear? They shut the brothel down…gotta deal with the breeders as _individuals_ now.”

Force’s only eye, vividly blue, flew wide. “They didn’t.” Involuntarily, he pulled on the chain and choke collar that kept Brute in line. “I promised my mate a breeder.” 

Koch was also dismayed. “It’s what you do at the Citadel, have some quim. Coming here without that is like not placing a bet on the Thunderdome.” They were passing by a cluster of guards: two armed War Girls. Koch eyed them avidly and muttered, “Look at ‘em. More chrome than ever.”

“Showing the lead again, Koch. A breeder’s not just quim. Any female can be quim, any bait.” Mangler grinned at Silence. “A breeder’s shine as it gets. Full-life enough to get bred up, some real meat on her bones. Not that I’m particular. I was hoping to get Wretched married while I was here. Didja hear what they do?”

“I assume it’s something revolting. Spare me.” Force snapped at Silence. “You. When you got yours. What did it take? Your bait face?”

Silence shook his head and made the barter gesture, rubbing his fingers together. He tugged at his jacket collar, his mask.

“Material barter?” When Silence agreed, Force said, “You may not be clean, but your deals are. An offer: do for us what you did for yourself. Find us a breeder, one at the minimum. Someone tough. You know what I mean?” They both looked at Brute. “NOT yours. Blue or green eyes. You do this: I turn my blind eye to what you do when you’re done being Office Boy, save one night’s hall roster. Go give your own breeder all your diseases. Deal?”

This was as honourable as Gastown got, a clean deal for someone looking after their mate. Silence did his best to say, with a gesture, that he’d try. He refrained from shaking Force’s hand and repeated the gesture. Force said, “Mnhhm,” and left it. He didn’t say what would happen if Silence failed. Silence knew better than to ask.

As on his previous visit, they alternated through dark tunnels and vivid day, to a grim conference room in the Green Tower. An assortment of Citadel grotesques met them. Silence knew the Imperator had many admirers. After listening to the Jade’s railings against Furiosa for years, he wasn’t one of them. The best rumor he’d heard about her was that she picked on those her own size, choosing strong Wasteland ferals for her lover-victims.

Corpus Collossus was there in state, too, surrounded by War Boys old and young. Silence was deeply glad he had masked himself up. That man was shrunken and stunted, but he forgot nothing. Corpus apologized for the History Man. “He’s dealing with some, ah, other business. We’ll get him in here soon enough. While today's project was a concept from your team, which he picked up in Gastown, what I know will help you refine it...”

The Imperator got to leave after the introductions. Silence was ordered around as a human map stand. Once the maps were approved and re-cased, a surly War Pup was detached from Corpus’ lot to tell him where he was going. The Worksman said, “Very good. Can’t talk, so he won’t bother your artist.”

Corpus said, “I doubt that will be a problem. The scribe’s not much of a talker, either. A word to the wise: if they’re covered up, you’ll want to keep them that way.” The Citadel guards sniggered. Silence shrugged. He contemplated this as he trudged up three wide flights of stone stairs, a good distance back from the War Pup. What had he expected, after the way the day had begun?

His first task each day in Gastown, for the past year of relative freedom, was an odd one: taking care of the Jade’s “demonstration rats.” They were tame examples of delicious protein for potential trade partners. Silence had been given the task in the two days while the Jade was deciding what to do with him, and nobody had revoked it. In shocked numbness at his changed fortunes, he’d spent time watching the animals’ small lives. Today, he’d eat anything that came off a Gastown grill, except a rat.

This morning one of the pair was dead in the cage.

Silence had no idea why. It had been the clever rat, too. The other rat, who was always trying to move into his sleeves or pockets, was all agitated misery. Silence had covered the slate he carried around in notes and left it there for his substitute. He felt stupid, now. This was what he got for being too rust to hand off the menial task. He was effectively speechless on this visit, unless he did a deal with this scribe.

The War Pup opened a salvaged door. “This is Master Corpus’ office. You don’t touch anything. You sit and watch the Worksman’s maps.” The child slipped inside. The space was several linked rooms, high and bright, a perfect lookout. Cotton was stretched over most of the window apertures, softening the harsh sunlight. The floor was padded with patterned, salvaged carpets. Priceless wood cabinets laden with books and science tools lined each wall, but there was little furniture otherwise. The first room was edged in benches, dominated by a blackboard and a large, strange desk. Sitting before it, the slender scribe looked small. “Rabbit, Rabbit, I’m here with your maps. This guard has to watch them ‘cause they’re valuable. He’ll stay while you draw.”

Behind his mask, Silence went rigid with disbelief. He was to spend the next several days in this luminous, remote suite with _that_ Wretch. Soft-spoken, warm-skinned Rabbit, who’d bent over backwards to help him before – and to hide her cleft lip from him. She was hiding it now, wearing the respirator mask he’d bartered to her. It set off her dark eyes, widening with alarm.

He’d liked her enough to tell her his name, invite her to Gastown…and she’d never shown. 

Torn between pleasure and anger, he decided he’d make his lie to Force true. With her. If she liked him but her indenture kept her here, like a trapped refinery worker, that was one thing. If she’d heard about his filthy past and turned away (he’d told her _his name_ ) then seducing her in spite would be fine revenge.

Either way, she would be a good notch for his belt. He’d never done it with a Wretch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tip of the hat to the Mad Max roleplayers online who've made Richard Smith the pre-apocalyptic name of the People Eater!
> 
> 'Verse notes: Silence's previous stories: [Gastown Nights](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4515567) (cameo in chapter 8), [Scav Hunt](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5609476), and [Fear and Loathing in Gastown,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6654655) chapters 2, 3, and 7.


	6. About the Citadel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two past dealmates are reunited: Rabbit tells Wretched tales about the Citadel: and another deal may be between the lines.  
> Notes: Genfic chapter.

The War Pup dashed away, eager to get back to the action around Corpus. Rabbit waited for the ferociously masked Gastown guard to say something first.

They didn’t say anything.

Behind her own mask, Rabbit took a shaky breath. “Hello. You can put them down here.” She’d planned this sentence well in advance, all words that never made her lisp.

The guard slapped a folio on the table, dropped a cylindrical container after it.

Again, nothing was said.

“Thank you. Which mapsss do I need to work on?” The guard still didn’t say anything. Instead, they began to open the folio. They were trim, well-off enough to have more than one layer of clothing. The longer they didn’t speak, the more it was possible that this was the one who had bartered her his mask: Silence.

Rabbit stood up, inspired. Memory brought her how to get this guard to reveal at least part of their face. “Do you want sssome aqua-cola?”

The guard glanced up, surprised at either the offer or her lisping speech. Then hands reached up and undid the upper half of their mask.

The moment she saw angular grey eyes, Rabbit knew. “I thought it was you!” She wrapped one ankle around the other, then pointed to the room’s blackboard. “Write there all you like. I’ll get you water.” She darted to one side and abused Corpus’ personal drinks stand to pour aqua-cola in a chipped crystal tumbler. With her back to him, she dared to say, “Maybe you don’th remember me. You traded me your masssk.” When she turned around, aqua-cola in hand, Silence had finished his own unmasking.

She hadn’t seen Silence for six oldmonths, when she’d tried to help him at the Citadel. He had filled out a touch, going from slender to trim. His sharp eyes were made doubly piercing by being lined with black kohl. Despite a stray, dark blonde lock tumbling over his forehead, his elegant mouth was pressed tight. He looked harder, overall. He remained the most beautiful, mysterious man she’d ever seen.

Silence was by the board, and he pointed to it.

_never came to gtown_

Rabbit felt her ears flush. He remembered. With so much roiling inside her, she spoke without considering her lisp. Silence had never seemed to mind it. “No. I wanted to. It’s not easy, though. And I, I thought you were only being nice.” 

His expression flicked into amusement.

_from gtown, never nice_

_don’t get out much?_

Rabbit shook her head. She had even avoided walking on the dusty ground again. She had her reasons. Silently, she handed him the aqua-cola. Like before, he downed it in a few gulps. This time he knew enough of the Citadel to drink it all himself, instead of offering some back to her, Wasteland style. Rabbit sat back down at the desk, a strange arrangement of glass, electric lights, cinder blocks, and precious wood, assembled for this specific task. He dashed off another note.

_shut down war tower water yet?_

_like to see that_

“I did learn how. But it would take three of me. Different valves in different places.”

Silence smiled wickedly. Rabbit was glad she was sitting down.

_here now, makes two_

_third?_

“I could ask Spark. He’s always showing off how strong he is.”

His face went set and cold. He wrote:

_war boy or wretch?_

Rabbit couldn’t help laughing. “Spark’s my Citadel pup! He’s six oldyears!” 

Silence’s eyes lit back up.

_good_

_get him to trick war boys to help_

She shook her head, smiling in turn under her mask. “I won’t do it, not really. I was angry, because of what they did to you…it was a weak moment.”

He looked angry, himself, and remote. After a surly moment tapping the chalk, he wrote, 

_you? a kid?_

“Oh, he’s not mine born. It’s a Citadel thing. So many war pups, few parents, even fewer mothers. So if you have the heart, you spend time with a pup. I only have one. Some have two, five, ten! Mine remembered that his mum was Wretched. And he’s smart, he loves to ask questions. And he’s…different. I see him a few times each moon. Draw him pictures, tell him tales.” She cut herself off to watch Silence write.

_weapons practice?_

“There’s another who does that, from the Imperator’s tribe. I’m not a fighter. Not like you.”

Silence nodded, once.

_what about your mate?_

That was what she got for talking about pups. She admitted, “I don’t have one.”

_that in your indenture?_

“My what?”

Silence left the board and strode up, pulling a wedge of folded cannibal’s vellum out of an inner jacket pocket for her to take. It was covered in minute writing.

Rabbit flipped through it, holding the tiny text up to her face, amazed. Six pages to say that he worked for Gastown? They controlled how long he had to stay with them! When he could do his own deals! Even how he looked! When she turned to the last page, he pointed to a section about compensation. She caught how it specified Citadel aqua-cola and certain kinds of food. As she handed it back, she said, “I don’t have one of these. I’m only…here.”

She held her breath as Silence stripped off his jacket. He wore a cotton salvage shirt, bleached incredibly white, half-open over his chest, revealing a gleam of metal - a low necklace? He leaned in and dipped his head, showing the Gastown brand at the back of his neck, and stepped back to the board.

_citizen’s brand?_

“We don’t get branded here any more.”

Silence shook his head, in disdain of either her low status or the disorganized Citadel.

Before he could ask any more embarrassing questions, Rabbit said, “Did they say which maps need to be copied?” He laid them out. There were nine of them, enormous multicoloured sweeps of knowledge, still vivid forty-six years after the Fall. In their lines and colours, they described the layers of stone beneath the Citadel, Gastown, and the Bullet Farm. Someone with knowledge and imagination could use them to find water, drill petroleum, prospect for rocks and metal.

Rabbit sighed at their beauty. History had said the Citadel might never get another chance to have them here. Corpus had agreed and lined up a fortune in cotton paper for her to trace them. She was going to have to do the hardest work in her life over the next four days, copying these priceless treasures - with this gorgeous, severe guard by her side constantly. She’d wanted to do the work in three days, so that she could be there for the drilling. If she kept her head, she might do it yet.

For a moment, Rabbit stayed quiet and blocked out one map with pieces of cotton paper. She decided each map would take four pieces. If she numbered the edges and noted the map’s name, she could reconnect the pieces. She’d been warned about the colours, and already decided to replace them with textures. A little texture tagging a stripe of rock formation could be filled in later. It was most important to capture the maps while they were here. She could take months to make them perfect. Maybe this would be all right, after all. Rabbit composed herself with a breath and turned to the maps’ custodian.

“What I’m going to do is trace each map onto this cotton paper. The paper goes on top, and I light the table up from underneath. The light goes through, and I can see the map to trace it. It won’t hurt the maps. Is that good?”

Silence nodded. He watched blandly as Rabbit did something that thrilled her, switching on the tracing table’s electric light.

Rabbit set up the first map to trace. Her relief didn’t last long. Silence grew restless. She had to stop him several times. “Don’t touch that! Please!” “We’re not supposed to go beyond this room.” “You can have as much water as you like but I can’t, I can’t have it on the table.” For a few minutes, he settled into pacing. Then he slung himself onto one of the benches, arms crossed, radiating boredom.

Rabbit had been doing some work on the edges of the first sheet, composing herself. It was the perfect moment to ask questions on Desperate’s behalf.  She had asked for fierce fighters, and if Silence was guarding these maps, all on his own, he had to be good.  

Then she heard the chalk scrape on the board again.

_tell me about the citadel?_

She melted with relief. A few stories in, she could bring the conversation around to what Des needed. That was a little longer to have Silence’s company focused on herself.  Rabbit knew that the moment Silence heard about Des, that would come to an end. She would be sad, for a while: but Desperate would stay a milker, spared the terrible suffering of the Wasteland. “I can do that and trace. Sit beside me? Then I don’t have to shout.”

Silence pulled up a stool beside hers. Even when she turned to the map work, she felt his presence. It was close to how she could feel the vast storms hovering, through wavering headaches. Except the sensation was around her heart.

She began to tell him.

* * *

Things had gone beautifully to plan, until Silence had asked Rabbit to tell about the Citadel.

Naturally, she’d sweetened towards him once he had confirmed that he was a full citizen, decently compensated. If she’d known he’d been a slave, that was the moment for her to speak up. She hadn’t. Instead, he’d been invited to sit right next to her. But this meant little if he had no time, if he didn’t set Force up with a Citadel breeder. That was going to take some work outside of this room, probably tonight.

For the sake of his putative role, Silence moved the maps for her. Each one took a good deal of work. It was soothing, watching her trace, listening to her. He liked her soft, lisping voice. Everything she said sounded like a secret.

Rabbit’s wiry arms and clear collarbones were the same as before. Her sun-warmed whitefella’s skin was nicked and freckled from her past Wretched life, but unmarked with illness. She’d gotten a decent haircut – the sun-battered tips were gone from her soft, fine waves – and learned to use a touch of kohl. With the mask hiding the lower half of her face, she was the Citadel’s dream of an uplifted Wretched, gentle, hard-working, petroleum-dark eyes rich with intelligence and interest.

And without it? How feral was she, then?

Silence knew he’d lose what he’d gained in here if he kept Rabbit from this work. He’d thought to kill two Buzzards with one shot while she worked, to seduce with listening while gleaning information for Gastown. But Rabbit had been Wretched for far longer than she’d been Citadel.

Amongst the Wretched, she had known the History People, who had shared their smarts and wordburgers. She had also listened to old hags, cunning lepers, a legless watchman, vacant-eyed ones who came in from the Wasteland and returned to it. And she had ascended the Citadel with a Rig’s worth of chilling tales.

About how the Citadel used to be underwater, unspeakably long ago. And the water that was left beneath it, deep underground, was old, old, old, from a cleaner, purer time. One day it would all run out, beneath both the Citadel and Gastown. The people would have to leave, and there had better be somewhere to go. Unless it rained. Then, the water would refill, and the world might live again…

About the Citadel’s beginning. The place had been stolen from the traditional people by the whitefellas. The great Before-time project _, Aquifer Development for Lifestyle Properties_ , opened the Citadel’s ancient treasure of water, left it for the taking in the Fall. Then the Immortan had stolen it once more. His bribes and his guns and his anger hadn’t been enough. He’d had to recruit the Wasteland, in the form of a goanna, to slink his rope inside. Then he and his best mate had climbed in, armed and alone, against fifty fierce men. They had emerged three days later, blood-soaked, triumphant survivors. The price of their victory was losing their souls. Not to the Wasteland, nor to the Citadel’s stone and water, but to Death itself. And they paid Death tribute every day that they ruled…

About the cast-out Wives of the Immortan who once landed amongst the Wretched. Rabbit had seen four. Two had been the victims of a whirling orgy of destruction, their hair hoarded yet as amulets. One had gone to the Wretched so completely, she refused re-ascent and had thrown rocks at kind, beautiful Cheedo for urging her a second time. The last one had walked into the desert, giving herself to a toxic storm. She had sacrificed herself to the Wasteland to seal a curse and bring the Immortan down. But curses were unreliable, and hers had gone awry. It had honed the Wasteland’s hunger for _all_ Citadel blood…

About the way the Wretched used to survive, under the Immortan’s cruel restrictions. It sounded very like Gastown, with the paired hard law and lawlessness, castes, cannibalism, ritual fighting and shifting alliances. No wonder the two of them got along…

About the Hot Zone. Once, it had been unimaginably beautiful, a Before-time city, but the end of the world had taken it. Nuclear strikes. The unspeakable energy behind them, radioactivity, was why there were half-lives, why many of the Wretched were physically warped: the afflicted. The Hot Zone was forbidden, taboo. There was no way to know which of its treasures held enough radioactivity to make you sick. The History Man had gone there when he shouldn’t have. He expected to die for this, to have the terrible lumps that throttled you from the inside. It had happened to his mate, who had stood beside him, but not to him. Perhaps that was the penance, being doomed to the Wasteland alone…

About what happened when you died. Valhalla wasn’t for the Wretched. But there was something, somewhere, for everything had a soul. After the maggot farms had your flesh, your spare bones stayed buried in the sand, for the crow people of the future to find. Yes, crows would become people. Crows were already almost people. In the Before-time, crows could count, and they remembered your face after meeting you once. The Wasteland was making the crows smarter, because the smartest, strongest ones survived, and had even smarter crow children. Now, if you hurt crows and they lived, they came back for you – with the rest of their murder…

Out there in the Wasteland? There were the road warriors. The caravans. They’d come together and clash in road wars. Sands would roll away, revealing treasures to salvage, and roll back in, leaving you to roam in misery, your cache gone. And, if you were a full life, bad luck was waiting if you saw the scarred wanderer White Eye. One sight of this terrible face would steal your memories and mar your dreams. Rabbit considered herself safe from White Eye, because of her cleft lip. The War Boys were safe as well, because they weren’t full-lives. When Silence asked if he was safe, too, thanks to losing his tongue, Rabbit said, no. He was a full-life still, and he had to be careful…

Then Rabbit admitted, “We tell the pups that one to keep them from going where they shouldn’t without a War Boy or an older Wretched.”

Silence managed a noise of amused dismissal. Rabbit touched his shoulder lightly to add, in an urgent whisper, “But it’s also true. So…beware.”

She was as silent as he for a time after this. The only sound was the scraping of her graphite stick.

A second map was nearly done. As happened often, Silence was pierced by jealousy. Rabbit had the wit and luck to remember everything, matched with a real talent, her drawing. Her seat at this desk showed she was a valued worker. Silence had gleaned what he knew eavesdropping, spying, hearing choice words from the Jade. In the years when any respectable Gastown youth was an apprentice, he had been a sex slave. When anyone trained him, he was expected to remember and excel. Gastown’s flesh mechanic had once said Silence could make a dead man come: “no surprise, considering the People Eater’s health, eh?” Silence could do it yet, for a man or a woman or anyone in between. If he was lucky, he’d feel something himself. Perhaps he would with Rabbit.   

Rabbit was still hiding her cleft lip. Corpus’ aerie was warm, but through the long, hot day, she didn’t remove her mask once to drink water. He was on his third tumbler. He felt his intuition about her settling into confirmation. The cleft, scar or mutation, meant she was tough. The way she hid it, from fear or shyness, was at odds with that. The two together made her _interesting._  

When Rabbit finished tracing the sheet she was working on, she sighed, and wrote numbers in its margins. “That’s two done. I can stop for today.” Something about the set of her shoulders had changed. She was going to ask him something important.

She turned away from him, doing something with the graphite and a paper scrap, when she did. “You’re one of the guards for Gastown?”

He didn’t like this question, but he nodded.

Her lisp thickened with nerves. “A, a friend of mine is looking to be with someone. She wants to get bred up by someone strong, different. A full-life like you. She’s beautiful, not like me. One of the Milking Mothers.”

Silence stared at her with new respect. Not only had she dealt with him but she did other deals, she wanted him on it, and it was _exactly_ the deal he was looking for. He flung himself at the blackboard.

_four guards eager_

_will barter her up_

_looks?_

Rabbit went on quite a bit. All he listened to was “green eyes.” He was smiling and giving her a thumbs up long before she’d finished.

_what do you call her?_

Rabbit paused. Silence heard her say, “We call her Death.” With a name like that, the woman was probably tough enough to survive Brute. Maybe even Force, too.

_show you other guards. now?_

“Yes. That’s…a good idea.”

Coming back to the table to shake hands on the deal, he looked down and saw that she’d nervously filled the paper scrap with assorted drawings. Star-like shapes with an organic softness, four-footed creatures. He whipped the scrap up with his hand. One of the creatures was, unmistakably, a rodent.

When he tapped the paper scrap and gave her another thumbs up, she went pink. “Those are nothing. I do them to make the graphite even.”

Silence tapped the rodent and took up the graphite stick to write beside it.

_another here_

_two together or they don’t do well_

Immediately, she took the stick back, to sketch another one right behind it, with the same light hand. There was an odd appeal to watching it happen, exactly as he’d asked.

_more?_

“I have more drawings, but in my room.”

_can I see? after we set up the milker_

“I’ll see her at dinner. Then… after?” Rabbit said this warily, as if waiting for him to back out. “It won’t take long.”

Silence let her think that. He pocketed the slip of paper, and she didn’t stop him, after saying yes to him three times in a row. They recased the maps. He masked up, gestured Rabbit to the stairs down. After the agreeable tension of her stories and her presence, he was eager to seal the deal.

Together, they went down the three flights to the conference room. Silence paused at the door. He had to clamp Rabbit’s wrist to hold her back and keep her from waving to the History Man, arrived at last. The guards were unimportant here, consigned to the edges of the room, easy to see. After Rabbit got an eyeful, Silence pulled them both away. Force had lifted his head and looked straight at them. When Silence had dragged them into a shadow, he lifted his hand and mimed writing on it. As when they'd first met, Rabbit took a message slate off her tool belt, handed it over with some chalk. He filled it.

_curls – Mangler. Name = man. guns – Koch, former Bullet Farm._

Mangler happened to pick this moment to throw back his head, wild hair spilling from the sides of his leather helmet, and laugh insanely at something Koch said. Koch smiled, too, rubbing a notched ear, bald head gleaming with Imperator’s soot, showing a pair of bullet teeth at one side of his mouth.

_mask - Force – in charge. chain - Brute – his mate._

“He’s huge,” Rabbit breathed. There was no denying it: Brute was seven feet tall and heavily muscled. His whitefella’s face, somehow dented in the middle, was vacant, open-mouthed, focused on Force if anything.  Force was a head shorter, which meant he was still tall, markedly broad shoulders making him a tight triangle of a man, almost entirely covered in black leather. All that showed of his skin was a pale strip at his throat and his mask’s opening around his left eye, piercingly blue. He held a thick chain in his hand, connected to a collar around Brute’s neck. Silence could almost feel Rabbit shiver.

_can she handle?_

“There’s five of you,” Rabbit said.

He shrugged. When she still looked perplexed, he wrote:

_not my deal_

Rabbit’s stance tightened with understanding. She slipped deeper into the hallway. “I’ll tell her. If she says yes I’ll bring her here soon after the sun is down. I think she’ll say yes to at least one. If no, I’ll, I’ll come tell you here, the same.” She shivered again, eyes downcast. Before he could offer any guarantee of her safety, she added, “You can keep the slate…”

Then, she was gone.

Silence stayed where he was for a moment, thinking. If that milker wanted strong, and she chose Brute, he could claim the deal with Force was fulfilled. How far did he trust Rabbit?

He decided.

Briskly, he walked in with the map folio and the paper roll. He slid over to Force and elbowed him to get his attention. When he had it, he gave a thumbs up, then held out his hand to shake.

Force hissed a few pointed questions. Silence assured him the woman was tough, green-eyed, down to breed. Satisfied, Force wrung Silence’s hand and said, “When?”

Silence pointed at the Before-time clock on the wall, then held up seven fingers. Then at the ground: right here.

“You staying for the setup?”

He nodded.

Force’s eye narrowed. He snarled, “Stay masked and out of the way. Out of the deal.”

Silence managed to make a salute sardonic.

Force rolled his eye. “I can only imagine what a schlanger you’d be if you could talk.”


	7. Desperate's deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate makes her deal with the Gastown guards.  
> Notes: Let the warnings commence! Things heat up, warnings for a sex work context, fetishized lactation, generally grungy Wasteland sexuality.

After the revolution four hundred days past, the Milking Mothers had changed. The number of women giving their milk had gone down by half. Those who did owned themselves again, and gave their milk for children and the unwell, not one creamy drop leaving the three Citadel towers. Being one wasn’t as indulgent as it used to be, under the Immortan’s hand. They trooped to the Green Tower mess hall to eat a generous Citadel ration twice a day, instead of having trays of choice morsels at their elbows four times a day. They declared this a thousand times better, because they could go where they wanted, instead of being trapped.

Des wasn’t entirely convinced. But it remained better than those days in the sand when you decided if you were going to eat clay or somebody else.

Tonight, she sat at the edge of the Milking Mothers’ group in the mess hall, saying little. The others had heard about the death of the Infirmary infant and were all being kind to her. Beneath her eyelids, Des was weighing the other tables and their workers. She was wondering if she’d remain in this tower, should she fail to conceive. The Green Tower mess hall had the best food. She couldn’t see Rabbit anywhere.

Finally, Rabbit slipped past and returned an empty plate. Catching Des staring at her, she gestured. Des said goodbye to the Milking Mothers to sweep out behind Rabbit.

There was no need for Citadel pleasantries with Rabbit. “Any breeders for me yet?”

Rabbit’s strange, soft voice drew out the words, “Four guardsss. You’ll pick the one you like betht?”

“Four Gastown guards? Chrome!” Des paused. “Are they chrome?  Healthy enough?”

“I did sssee. Three of them look healthy. One hath a mathk. I think he’th handthome, underneath? They’re…” Rabbit paused. “They’re big,” she said, warily.

Des’s smile was, too. “Trust me, I can handle anything.”

“No, they’re really thcary.” In the safety of the Green Tower, Rabbit’s wide eyes and lisp made her nervous words amusing.

Des smiled, all indulgence. “All of them? They’re all scary?”

Rabbit nodded earnestly.

“How long are they here for?”

“Three dayth after thith.”

“That makes four nights. One per night…that’s perfect.”

Rabbit shook her head. “What if they hurt you?”

Desperate snapped her arms tense. Muscles still sprang. “I’d like to see them try, here. If they do half the guards in the place will be on them.”

Rabbit was visibly impressed. “Can you meet them after sssundown at the conferethece room?”

“At the where?”

Rabbit gave a little sigh. “I’ll bring you. Sssoon.”

“Great. Come on, I owe you - I’ll get you in the Mothers’ baths with me if you can go now.”

Rabbit followed immediately.

Inside the Mothers’ baths, Des knew what she was doing was worth it. Here was an array of Wasteland impossibilities, seven hundred meters above the ground. A space to be naked in safety, the light filtered, the entry well back and guarded. Plentiful water, in showers or a soaking tub, shared by healthy bodies. Slivers of scented soap for washing. A shelf of unguents, powders and clays to soothe irritated nipples and heat-prickled curves. For Des, it was Valhalla.

Des was considered a full-life despite the lumpy scarring along the right side of her jaw. Undressing, she caressed her skin, lifted a filled-out breast, delighted in the spread of her hips and thighs. She wasn’t as glorious as the other Milking Mothers, but she’d do. She kept herself under a shower and encouraged Rabbit to take some scented soap and another shower, rather than the tub. Des never had found out if Rabbit’s disaster of a mouth was contagious. A sidelong glance at the rest of Rabbit’s body showed that the rest of her skin was whole over her bones, a pleasant surprise. Des had known those in the Wasteland who’d overlook her face for the baseline of a healthy young female. But Citadel people remained crazy for full-lives. An idea occurred to her.

“You want one of them when I’m done?”

Rabbit started. “One of the four?”

“You could, you know. Gastown’s different.” Rabbit shook her head in silent denial, hand over her mouth, eyes huge. Des shrugged, remembering that Rabbit had been scared of them.

Worse, making Rabbit think led to her digging up a complication. “You’ll talk to them? Like the Imperathor’s people sssaid? Negothiation.”

Des groaned as she reached for a piece of canvas to dry off with. “That was crazy. Fourteen days after the Sisters took over, those two old Vuvalini got all us Citadel women together to tell us _how we should schlang people_? Nothing I didn’t know before. Even the part about not getting bred up.”

“Yeth, but …you got to choothe.”

“Most of the time,“ Des lied. “You know how it was. I’ll say this for the Vuvalini, they did, too.” When the Vuvalini said Citadel women were under no more obligation to go with any man who demanded it, Des had wondered if it would stick. It had been tested, pushed back against the Council, and the Citadel had learned. It stuck now. With some men, the new order increased the value of a no-strings offer. Others actually seemed to welcome the ensuing complications and ties.  

Des soaked up the girl’s compliments while she adjusted her wraps three times. She recruited Rabbit to dash black around her eyelids, in the fashion Cheedo had set: unexpectedly, Rabbit’s hands were deft at this. She bit her own lips red. Her final touch was replacing her crude dagger in its hiding place amongst her wraps. Des had killed men with less. Another sharp shard of metal awaited in her bed’s pillows. She arranged her breasts one final time, tightening the halter straps, and sighed in satisfaction at what she’d made of herself. “Let’s go.”

Des followed Rabbit down two levels, pattering in light sandals behind the girl in her work boots. She allowed herself to be led by a circuitous route, held back from passing once or twice as Citadel men went by. Des rolled her eyes at Rabbit’s tiresome caution. If any guards had confronted them, she was sure she could bluff her way through. When they drew near a pair of scarred, salvaged double doors, Rabbit whispered, “Here.”

“Let me go in by myself. I have a plan!” Des said, proudly.

Rabbit sighed again. “I’ll be in the hallway if it goeth wrong.”

Des gave her a prickly glare. “You said you didn’t want them, so leave them to me.”

“Let me watch sssome? Pleathe?”

Flattered by her admiration earlier, Des decided to let her see how it was done. “Fine, but clear out soon.”

When they reached the doors, some Gastown number was in front of them, fully masked. Des glared at his trimness. The way he was standing, he was no fighter. She muttered to Rabbit, “I thought you said they were chrome.”

“He helped,” Rabbit whispered.

This character looked Des up and down. He shrugged one shoulder, then pushed a door back. Rabbit pointed inwards. Des hustled past them, hungry for the main event.

And stopped.

Des weighed them in an instant. Rabbit had been right to be frightened of these men. A madman, a killer, and a muscle-bound giant. Their presence swept Des back into the heat and fear of the Wasteland, half a kilometre above the ground.

The one who seemed like he’d gut you for filth and giggles spread his strap-braced arms and leered. “Hey hey! Hell-o, Mrs. Walker!”

The killer tucked his semiautomatic (who was he, that they were letting him haul that around?) under his arm. He made her a slight bow. “He’s Mangler. I’m Koch, ma’am.” His tight smile revealed two side teeth replaced by bullets. Koch held up an arm to restrain the third guard.

Des was glad somebody did. She’d only seen three or four bruisers to compare with him in her life, a human wall of muscle, and he was starting forwards at the sight of her, rumbling, “Breeder!”

Des shielded her breasts with one arm and stepped back. “I heard there were four of you?” She glanced back at the door.

As she turned, a shadow dropped from the ceiling, pounced on the floor and sprang upright, strong and fluid. Des leapt back with a scream, then cursed herself for it. This one was all black leather, masked, strapped, studded, tight, save for one hard gimlet eye – that was where she’d gouge, if she attacked.

“Breathing. Decent reflexes. I like that. Call me Force.” The last man gave her the same hard eye she’d given the Gastown mask in the hall. He took it a step further by grabbing her arm, then her shoulder, and following it up with a smack on her ass. 

His rough assessment herded her into the middle of the four of them. She cried, “Don’t damage…me!” It sounded better when Toast barked something similar.

Force ignored that. “A looker, but lean.”

Koch said, “What do you expect? You sent a lightweight, you got a lightweight.”

Force jerked his thumb at the louring giant. “Brute’s my mate, I’m his minder. There was an incident once. Someone dislocated a hip, and it wasn’t Brute.”

“Nice of you to care.” She peered over Force’s shoulder. Rabbit was barely visible in the doorway shadows. She could go for help, if it came to it.

“I haven’t got a compensation budget, or a lot of time,” Force said. “Here’s the deal from our side. We’re at the Citadel. We’re male. I put the word out for a Citadel breeder who’s got it in her to deal. If you can’t guess what we want, you’re too stupid to live. You here to deal with us?”

Des placed her hands on her hips. They were treating her like a cut too good for the maggot farm? She’d treat them the same. Gastown greasiness hung around them, though they were clean-shaven, that she could see. Most Triumverate men went as bare as they could from the scalp down, to show off their health and keep cool under their gear. Their bareness showed muscle and clean skin. None of them were young. She liked that: they were seasoned survivors. Their belts were rich with gear. Mangler and Koch were indubitably full lives. Brute and Force each had their own grim attractions. She let her gut choose - or something lower. “Yes.”

“Then we’ll treat you like a Gastown whore.” Force said that like it was a good thing. Des shuddered at its rawness. His blue eye narrowed, amused. “Means you can walk away and do the job again tomorrow night. It’s on you to say when, and to make us your offer.” He cocked his chin.

It was her turn. “I’ve heard you’re here for four nights. What I want is one of you a night, one man at a time, and I make it chrome.” There was, she thought, only one of the four who’d balk at being split up.

Koch, devouring her with his gaze, said, “Thought they didn’t have breeders any more.”

Des backtracked. “I’m a Milking Mother. I’m out to get bred up. Figured I’d barter up too, while I was at it.”

“You’re a milker? And you want us to breed you up?” Mangler grinned wider. “Hoo hoo! It’s like the Amnesty.”

Force elbowed closer. “A pretty story. You got proof?”

Des curled her lip, wishing she had barter for every time a man said that. She drew one of her breasts, still heavy, out of its wrap. She gave the fullness of it a twist at the base, making herself wince with a pinch to her russet areola. White cream pearled out. She caught it on her fingers. With a smile, she lowered her eyelids, then opened them halfway, to look hot and drowsy. She met each man’s eyes briefly, as if he’d be the one she invited to taste her.

The air went heavy with musk and tension.

Des opened her mouth, dabbed her creamy fingers against her own pointed tongue.

“Oh, you bitch,” Force snarled.

Mangler was bouncing on his feet in anticipation. “Hey! Hey! I got a question. Do you have a dog? Somebody said the Citadel’s looking for dogs, got a bounty out for them. Does that mean that somebody high up likes her dogs? Know what I mean?”

Force whirled around and backhanded Mangler, crisply. “Warned you before we left, rust-mouth, that rumor gets you Blood Circled here.” He spun back to Des, holding up placating palms. “He didn’t say anything. Did he?”

“Didn't say nothing!” Brute said.

Koch gave her a look and shook his head, a flush rising on his olive cheeks. 

Des laughed. If they were going stupid around her, that was an excellent sign. “Calm down, boys. You want my deal?”

There were grunts of assent all round, save for Force, as she’d expected. He said, “For Brute, yes. For me, not the deal I’d choose. But you’re on the grill, sweet meat, so I’ll bite.”

Des felt her nostrils flare. In a group like this, one bloke always had to be the sphincter. “Then let’s get acquainted. The order I go in is the order you get.” She made her choices, balancing her breeding wishes, Force’s warning, and the tight pulse between her legs. Ten seconds was all it took. She approached her first choice, arms open.

Mangler was the kind of filth who’d do hipbones in a maggot farm, if there was some meat on them. For all that, he was healthy and alive, with warm toasted skin and that full pillowy mouth, his oiled curls a wiry brush against her. Accepting her embrace, he groped her ass, crushed her breasts, and rubbed his nose against hers.

Koch was next. She favored him with a long look, arms reaching up high so she could nuzzle against his neck. Stern, dark, handsome, groomed clean, why wasn’t he in charge somewhere? He lifted her hand further and pressed his mouth to it: she felt the bite of his bullet teeth. But his touch felt perfunctory until, disengaging, she brushed his holster. That sent a jolt through him. Ah-hah. Bullet Farm, she’d bet. She’d find out his deal and more.

Brute didn’t wait for her, seizing her. She felt like one of the Milking Mothers' discarded dolls in his massive hands. He grabbed for her breasts; he’d been staring at them since her milker’s display. She bit back a sound of pain as he crushed them. “Not so hard,” she said, twisting away to stand sidelong. She deflected his hands down the length of her body, feeling them clumsy and hungry, full of crude promise.

Force detached her from Brute, sliding a gauntleted hand around one of her hips to spin her to him. He caged her tight for an instant. The others had felt like flesh. Encased in leather, he was all hard, creaking surfaces, over moves like fluid steel. Des cursed herself. The others were fine, going to be good dirty rides. This one, the touch of him drove a hook in her.

He hissed in her ear. “Smart, picking Brute for third. The others would be a letdown after him. Good thing you've had a kid already, milker.”

Des placed herself nose to nose with him, widened her eyes. “What about you?”

Force proceeded to drive her mad by letting her go. His eye was bright and cold. “I’ll see what’s left of you when Brute’s done.”

“Go last like a Buzzard and eat the scraps!” said Mangler. He curled his tongue through his teeth, slurping.

“Hold the option on the last night,” said Koch. “I might buy it back off you.”

Desperate tossed her head to make her hair cascade. “Each of you. What’s your offer for your round?”

It felt good to be dealing again. She had been living soft. Des said yes to Mangler’s leather belt pouch. Leather was rare at the Citadel. She decided to accept Koch’s ammunition strip, too. If nobody here could use it, it would look hot draped over her milker’s cottons as she nursed.  A pair of leather gauntlets, too large for her, were offered by Force on Brute’s behalf. The high value in their big palms implied that she was in for it, with Brute. Force remained reserved, said he’d offer if it came to it: a classic sphincter's move. Still, every time he spoke, Desperate felt a twist in her gut. She was torn between taking it for desire or warning.

“We got an agreement? You, all of us, four nights?” Force’s eye pierced everyone. When nobody protested, he held out his black-gloved hand. Des smacked her narrow, scarred palm into his. As they shook, they both tried to crush the other one. She could hear Force breathe, amused to feel her grip. “Brute! Your hand!” The other two joined in as well, in a five-way affirmation.

Afterwards, Mangler kept her hand in his big sweaty mitt. “You, uh, got a place?”

“Do I ever.” She smiled and indulged in blasphemy. “Shall we to the pleasure Vault?”

Mangler grinned like the perverted maniac he surely was. “Yes ma’am!”

On the way out, Des noted that Rabbit had used her smarts to choose a good moment and leave. That was her last thought for someone else for some time. The only Gastown mask Des had refused slipped her mind completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all the adventurous readers of this story! Your hits and kudos are appreciated. Smut starts next chapter and rolls on for 5 out of 6 upcoming installments. Expect Wasteland wierdness, het, and a ~~gratuitous~~ bonus F/F chapter.


	8. A settlement girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate takes on a former Polecat and admits where she’s from. Notes: Explicit! Raunchy het sex, sex work context, and pervery.

_We’ll treat you like a Gastown whore._

Des was walking Mangler to her room, but it was Force’s words that haunted her. It was time to get to work.

She had to start sooner than she’d expected when she saw a pair of War Boy guards, in full old-school white, on patrol. Quickly, she backed Mangler into a doorway. She flung her white-clad self against him, doing her best to conceal his demented Gastown gear under her spread limbs. He was happy to get another feel until the guards had passed, averting their eyes. “Hungry for it, ain’tcha?”

To her surprise, she was. Grown bored with Citadel men, this splash of guzzoline was to her taste. “Come on,” she breathed. The rest of their way was clear. It was another beautiful, still night outside. The Green Tower’s corridors, dark after sundown, were mostly empty. They went by occasional smoky torches, then, in the Milking Mother’s area, wavering, crude electric lights. One of them snapped dark as they passed.

“Place always this dead at night?” Mangler asked.

“Shhhh. We’re here,” Des said. There was a pocket inside her wraps. She drew out a hand-forged key and turned the lock that had once kept women in. Now, it kept everyone else out.

Her room was already full of moonlight, spilling in to bleach her bed. She reached out and flicked a switch. Another wavering bulb glowed to life, warm shadows filling the space. Abruptly, she clapped her hands and spoke like every Mother she’d ever known. “Boots, trousers, outers off. This room’s clean.”

Below his battered goggles, Mangler laughed, stretching his broad cheeks. His strong chin dimpled as he smiled. “Yes’m!”

Des stood by her door and watched him, further inside, next to her bed. His undressing filled the room with a man’s Wasteland musk: rancid leather, heavy sweat, topped off with the unique Gastown reek of guzzoline and burning. Beneath it all was the undernote that had led her to choose Mangler first, human health. His goggles came off at last. He had downturned eyes under heavy, wiry brows. His skin was whole, scarred, a thick pliable hide, hands and lower face tanned clean and dark, the rest of him warm tawny tones. As she expected, he was groomed nearly hairless from the neck down. She liked his wild mop of hair. Not a man in the Citadel had the match, yet. Growing it like that took years.

Des inhaled. “Right. Everything.”

Mangler bared his big white teeth. “Gonna check the pipeworks, huh?”

“You know it,” she said. He was naked now. “Last step before we deal.” Des went down on her knees. She knew men. Her face in front of his crotch would distract from where she was placing her hands. If he showed sick, sores or chancres, she’d throw his gear out her door and let him follow it.

Des focused on him and felt her mouth moisten.  His meat was split into a heavy, dusky trio, a fat, wide shaft balanced on a weighty scrotum. “I got the stones,” he said, proudly. Des favoured him with a brilliant smile as she lifted his cock, checking its underside, rolling back the foreskin with a practiced touch. She frowned and stroked the sides, where there were some even, paired marks. No disease marked like that. “What’s this? Scars from mods?”

“Close. I nailed the works to a board once.”

“You nailed your cock to a board?” Des twisted his meat in her hand. Mangler paid little attention.

“I’ll try anything! You don’t get to mess around with a piece of wood every day, ya know.”

Des stood up, leaving Mangler’s gear where it was. “What do you do?”

“Enh, you know. Whatever’s going. I’m not one of those mating-up types. There’s no point to anything,” Mangler said, cheerfully.

“For Gastown, I meant.”

“This an’ that. I was in a gang, then I made Polecat.”

“A Polecat!”

Mangler shrugged. “That was good fun, but not anymore. Polecats get busted up fast. They call me a guard. I do the rough stuff. Anyone breaks their indenture, they get a session with me.” He smiled again. “Like you’ve got right now!”

So, he was an ex-Polecat, one who’d lived through it. She could count his flaws on one hand: a leg scarred and shorter than the other, twisted hands from pole grappling, a missing tooth – and his missing heart. Des stood up. At her throat, where her wraps crossed, there was a coarse pin, sharpened wire topped with a red bead, dark as blood. She pulled it. Her haltered wrap fell away, bands falling from her breasts, fabric releasing from her hips. She was left nude, save for a wire bracelet and dangling wire earrings, standing in a pool of creamy fabric.

Mangler’s scarred fingers flexed; he took a step towards her. Des threw her hair back over one shoulder and gave a turn, lifting her breasts. “Want some?” He was on her, and she believed him about a past as a Polecat. In one move, he scooped and lifted her so he didn’t have to bend down to her nipples. She braced herself for the bite of him, but his big mouth landed soft, all lips and tongue, sucking – no, slurping – at her left nipple. She shook her head from side to side at the strange internal release, the feeling of her milk coming down. Her body’s response lifted her back into arousal.

While Mangler ate and drank her, his big rough hands roved her body. He didn’t put her down as he sank onto the edge of her bed. The weak old bed had its own ideas and sagged dangerously; Des extracted herself. “I’ll lie here,” she said, easing herself onto the opposite end, next to her pale pillows. As she lowered down, she lifted her legs, raising them in the air, paired tight together. Slowly, she let one knee fall open, drawing a hand down her knee, her thighs, up to her crotch. Proud, she stroked the trimmed triangle of hair there. She stroked back up to caress her stretch marks with equal pride, the fierce vertical marks gleaming silvery down her belly, like traces of aqua-cola.

He appreciated the show. “Little mother! You’re beautiful. Gorgeous. Your tits. Your cunt. Amazing!” The pylon of his cock swelled to salute her. He levered up, seized her to lay her along the bed. Des got ready to spread her legs, but instead, he buried his face between her breasts. His hair tickled. After a moment, he knelt up and seized her ankles. Des got ready again to spread her legs and take care of her breeding business. This time, he popped the toes of her right foot into her mouth.

“What are you doing?” she shrieked.

Mangler’s teeth scraped the ball of her foot. “You’re perfect everywhere!” He began to chew his way down her leg, biting hard.

“No marks! You said you weren’t anybody’s mate! Me neither!” Des reminded him. Then she jerked her body as his mouth landed clumsily on her cunt.

“Citadel style,” he said, muffled, as he got a good taste of her. This was the opposite of breeding. Des started to bring her legs together. He seemed to allow this. When she’d done it, he grabbed her hips and flipped her over, as if she weighed nothing, and brought his face back down to lap at the cleft where her thighs and ass formed a plush cross. She yelped and kicked at him.

Mangler loved this. “Hoo hoo! You’re as bad as one of those prissy settlement girls!”

Des pulled herself up the bed. “That’s right. I was.”

“Really? Yeah, you coulda been. One of the last’ns.” He grabbed her hips and flipped her back to face him, to examine her all over again. “I ain’t seen a settlement girl in years! Were you all protected-like?”

Des got ready to snap, then paused. He said nothing mattered. Then her story wouldn’t, either.

She curled up, demurely. “The settlement kept us safe from everything. We were supposed to be pure.” Her first memory was about that: a bonfire, a great pile of the flammable blocks called books lighting up the night. They had been allowed to run wild, encouraged to chant and sing as the bad naughty books burned, keeping them from being wicked, keeping them on the Way. The fire had been the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She remembered tripping over her long skirt and dashing back to her mother. Who had, as usual, cried and moaned and told her to be good. There’d been one book left after that, which only their settlement’s leader could touch and read from.

“You didn’t go out on salvage runs?”

“Where I was, the women never went beyond the barricades.” The boys had: there was tacit approval of them sneaking out to play and explore. The time she’d followed, she’d been beaten, hard. Her mother cried a lot between telling her how much better it used to be and how lucky they were. This had been hard for her to understand. Were their lives bad or good? The dry, hot days had been split between working and dull lessons. She’d only paid attention when they talked about the girls being some man’s wife.

Mangler had curled up behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist, his thick erection along the crack of her ass. “I would’ve been your worst nightmare. Polecat raider! Rrrarrr!” He chomped her shoulder.

She laughed this off, rubbing back against him. “Maybe not!” Like the other settlement women, she’d been horrified at the Wastelanders who’d come to trade. But she always peeked at them, even when it meant a beating. They were raw, dirty, terrifying, fascinating. After a glimpse of them, she’d dreamed about adventure.

“Makes sense that you’d end up here. How’d that happen? One of us haul you in?”

It had been a long road, beginning with the betrayal of being bartered out of the settlement, to a Wasteland man, at fourteen. They’d thrown her to a gang they’d wanted to ward off. She’d be doing God’s work, the leader said. _One less mouth,_ she caught whispered, _daughter too many, troublemaker._ Her mother’s last words to her had been, _You’ll be a wife, now: for the love of God, behave._

She’d understood her mother, in the years after that. And stopped dreaming.

What she told Mangler came automatically, after all the times she’d said it. “My baby died. I still had milk. They let me up.”

“‘Course they did, a settlement girl!” He reached around, pawing between her legs. She moaned and pretended to resist – not enough to stop him. Pretending shyness again, she pulled half her hair across the scars on her jaw. He wasn’t paying attention, rolling her onto her stomach again. In a moment, Mangler was sliding his meat between her legs.

“Put that where it belongs,” Des said, wriggling her hips, flexing up onto her knees. “Go on!”

Des rocked forwards at the thrust of him. She found herself grabbing the iron bars of her bedstead so she didn’t bang her head. With her other arm, she supported her swaying breasts as he hammered her from behind. Des made a noise of protest as he slid out, then groaned as he worked his thickness back in. When this happened a second time, she turned herself over, legs spread wide. 

“Get on me. If,” she weighed his pervery, “you don’t mind getting some of my milk on you.” He couldn’t resist mouthing her toes a second time as he mounted her. Once in, he pounded and pounded, panting hard, until Des was wet and blunted. His excitement at her settlement past had thrown her off her stride. She needed to get him to come, soon, to breed her up. She’d start in about that. Citadel men lost it, when you asked them to breed you.

Before she could say anything, Mangler spoke, sounding strained. “Hey. About the dog thing. You see one, ever?”

“At the settlement,” she gasped, closing her eyes to clench her abdomen’s muscles, deep inside, to milk his cock.

“Ever – hhhhhhahh – ever have one?”

Des blinked. “No. But I’ve heard they’re _delicious_.”

That did it. With another one of his snarls, he shot into her. By the time he’d emptied his balls, she was slick enough that she barely felt his cock. Des arced her neck with a purring moan, celebrating her success.

Mangler collapsed on her. “Hoo!”

His muscular weight drove all the breath out of Des. She thought about her second piece of sharp metal, under her pillows, and pummelled his shoulder. “Can’t breathe. Up.” He rolled over against the bed’s creaking complaints. Lolling, his arm dropped over the side of the bed. By the time Des had collected herself, she saw him working something with both hands.

Des sat up. “What are you doing?”

Mangler was wrapping the straps of fabric around his own chest, trying to reproduce how she’d wrapped it around herself. “What’s it like to wear this stuff? Don’t you feel naked alla the time?” asked Mangler, hopefully.

Des shook her head. There’d been bad times when she’d worn less in the Wasteland: she stopped herself from saying it. Tonight, she was a settlement girl. “I got used to it. In the settlement we had old dresses, down to our toes. This stuff’s new.”

Mangler settled back in the improvised wrap. “Is it true the Immortan was screwing everything that moved here? Wives, Milkers, War Boys, the Bullet Farmer?” He fluffed his hair and squeaked, “Immortan, can it be my turn tonight?”

Des sank back, giggling. His banter stank as badly as his guzzoline-splashed Gastown boots, but she hadn’t laughed this much in oldyears. “You’d give him a run for his aqua-cola!” She slipped fingertips under the wraps on him. “Up for another round, girlfriend?” His first round of jism was slicking down her legs. After witnessing his fitness up close, she’d take every drop she could get.

Mangler turned to her, leaning on one elbow. “Tell me more about the old man an’ I will be.”

Des racked her brains for something slightly plausible about the Immortan. The claims remained outrageous, always second or third hand. She had no idea who was telling the truth about what. Tidda, a boring exemplar of a Milking Mother, claimed he’d take on five women in one night. Her favorite guard had the idea that all three Warlords had partied together – never at the Citadel, in Gastown, where anything went. She hadn’t witnessed a bit of it herself. Her brand hadn’t even begun to heal when everything changed.

Des settled on the one thing she knew was true. “Did you hear what they did with the Immortan’s bed after the revolution?”

“The Immortan’s bed? This, I gotta hear.”

“The Imperator went up with the Immortan’s keys on her belt. By tradition, everything he had became hers. That’s how it used to be – kill someone and what they had was yours – ever since the Immortan took the Citadel. She took over his quarters.”

“Aaaaah, the good stuff!”

“Right. Except for his bed. This huge Before-time bed, big enough to hold all his breeders at once. Three layers of covers. Tall, too. The most comfortable bed you can imagine. But the Imperator didn’t want the bed.”

“Why not?”

“To this day I have no idea. It was weird. Nobody in the Tower who was offered the bed wanted it. The women in charge of the Infirmary turned it down. So they sent it down the Treadmill and pushed it out, with all the covers, everything. They said any woman who wanted it could have it.”

“Yeah, like that would work.”

“The Imperator’s tribe can shoot. The Wretched men listened. So this passel of women, born and chosen, anyone calling themselves she, about twenty of them grabbed the bed and wheeled it off into the Wasteland. They were yelling like crazy, we heard them from the Skullmouth. This one bloke grabbed something to barter and ran after them, but they weren’t up for it, they stoned him ‘till he fell back.”

Mangler’s big mouth was open. “What next?”

“I can’t say for sure. But,” Desperate smiled wickedly, “the women’s yelling didn’t stop until dawn. Can you picture why?” The rise she was getting out of Mangler showed that he did.

Des sat up and peeled her wraps off him, letting her fingers linger appreciatively on his thick, smooth hide. “Their party only stopped because a storm came in. They all ran back, all but two of them. The storm hit. Afterwards, the bed and the last two women were gone.”

“They say if a Citadel woman dies in the Wasteland in a storm, her ghost comes back here, but only during the storm itself, only on the ground. She’ll be as beautiful as she ever was at her best. They say she’ll ask you to breed. If you go with her…” Des trailed off, lying back.

“What’ll she do?” Mangler was practically drooling.

Des stared at the ceiling. “It’s death.”

Mangler laughed, a mad howl. “Awesome! That’s how I want to go.” He pounced on her. Des rolled with it. She let his body smother her, like dunes and time had surely covered the death she’d left behind her, on the Citadel’s ground.


	9. Secrets revealed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rabbit and Silence each reveal far more than they’d planned. 
> 
> Notes: Warnings! Body horror. Backstory rape discussion. Explicit het. The fine line between beauty and the grotesque – where is it drawn? If the question doesn’t intrigue you, maybe skip this one.

Outside the conference room, Silence and Rabbit watched from a shared shadow. When Desperate slid a hand inside her upper wraps, Silence began to leave. Rabbit whispered, “You don’t want…” She gestured back at the conference room.

Silence shook his head again and pointed at Rabbit. He took out the slip of paper with her tiny sketches. From the group inside, Rabbit heard Des laugh. She sounded safe. Rabbit could please two people at once by leaving. “Here. Down.”

A deep staircase was waiting, lit by a few wavering bulbs. In mutual quiet, they descended. 

Rabbit yearned to arrive, and to never arrive, to extend this unexpected day. The maps, and the thrilling company, and a chance for Desperate. Silence had even put up with her voice while she told stories, like the History Woman had. She hoped he hadn’t been too bored. He’d helped Des so easily, too.  She cringed inside, remembering how awkward she’d been, how Des had sneered at him, her weak defense in response. With him masked and in shadows, the only way she had of reading his responses was what he was doing. He was following her still.   

Silence picked his way down the rough-hewn, dim stairs. He had all night, now, thanks to that desperate-sounding Milking Mother. She hadn’t always been one, not the way she’d handled that deal. Four days from now, she might even be in one piece. He wondered whether the older woman really wanted a child or if they’d spun this story to tap into men’s hunger for a Citadel breeder. If so, he approved. It blended with his approval of Rabbit’s slight, swaying back, and her frequent glances at him.

The staircase ended abruptly. A rough aperture took them to a hallway that had changed abruptly from Citadel stone to Before-time smoothness, lit with a few guttering torches. This was the very start of the old aquifer well complex, near the base of the Citadel.

Silence was interested. In Gastown, the higher your rank, the more Before-time your quarters. Rabbit paused before a door with a small animal chalked on it. She unlocked it. “Wait here while I light my lights. Then you can come in,” she said. Silence scrutinized the animal on the door while she was inside. It was the opposite of a rodent, long ears and short tail.

Inside, Rabbit hastily lit her own kerosene jar-lights. She decided to splurge, plunging into her seven-day’s ration of kerosene and wicks to light all four. Her heavy tool belt, she removed, lining it up with her other possessions. She glanced quickly at her art, doubting it despite the pleasure it had brought her. Well. He’d asked. At least she’d get to remember him being in her room.

Outside, Silence unmasked. He took a mirror piece out of one pocket. He rubbed away a strap mark, used one finger to tighten his smudged kohl, tucked his knife and rebar nightstick into his boots. His mind flickered, calculating his offer for Rabbit. A pair of nitrous oxide ampoules, his leather belt, or his garrotte should all close the deal. His shine flask and butyl nitrate, he’d keep for himself. He was enjoying being on this side of an offer, so far from what he had been.

The door eased open. “Okay.”

Silence slid inside – and was astonished.

The four smooth walls of the room were covered in one unified drawing.

Rabbit held her breath as he stopped. Her art was chalk against time-grey concrete, vivid in the dimness. The Citadel put some mica in the chalk, so that the pale lines reflected light, good for messages in dark corridors. She had placed the jar lanterns in three corners of the room, and in one other spot. Rabbit saw Silence turning to take it in. “It’s in four parts. The area around the door, I did it like the Citadel’s gardens, like all the plants.”

To Silence’s gaze, it was all stretching, twining strangeness. Rabbit gestured to the left. “This wall here is the Before-time before there were people.” The plant-lines tied together a hundred smaller drawings of history creatures: dogs, kangaroos, dozens he didn’t recognize. She pointed to the room’s narrower rear wall. “This is the Before-time when there was people.” Leaves and tendrils continued around a mix of shapes, maps and humans, some small and grouped in throngs, a few larger head sketches. “And this over my bed is the future. What might come.” The vegetation didn’t stop. There were a lot of strange birds: Silence thought of her words about crow people. It all wove back into the Citadel garden on the entrance wall. There were no windows, only a ventilation louver on the back wall.

Silence was distracted by her bed: a heap of cushions and sofa squabs, in faded reds, oranges, and pinks, a few large pieces of fabric amongst the mix. The pile rested on a slab of concrete. The head of the slab was marked by a glass bottle of aqua-cola and a final jar lantern.

“It’s different from the graphite drawings. I can’t refine the line as much. This is the second time I’ve done it – the second version.” Rabbit found herself standing in the middle of the room on one leg. Silence, though unmasked, remained unreadable. His hair, escaping from its glossed waves earlier, reflected the weak light. The room’s shadows sharpened his high cheekbones and the muscles in his neck. To her relief, he began to pace slowly around the walls. There was room for this: her space was easily twice the size of Desperate’s upstairs. She followed Silence, an arm’s length away, on edge at how intently he studied the drawings.

Silence’s mind raced. Who were the heads on the wall? How could she sleep with those birds there? What did the room, itself, mean? The strangeness sharpened the varied urges that had brought him this far. He’d handed the slate back to her when they’d reunited and she’d whisked it away somewhere. Of course he'd filched some chalk upstairs for his pockets, but how was he supposed to write up an offer to her when there wasn’t any blank space? Then he caught the only unchalked area: the door itself. He walked past the door, as if he was starting a second circuit. When he paused, she was right in front of it. He turned to her.

Rabbit felt herself almost vibrating. She had to ask. “Do you like it?”

Silence held up an OK sign. He tapped against the door. Rabbit thought, at first, he was going to leave. Instead, he wrote there, in small letters. She had to go close to see the words.

_i like it_

_i’d like something else too_

Rabbit realized he was right behind her as he put one of his hands on the door, at the level of her waist. Before she could turn, Silence closed the gap between them with his body. His lips, firm and warm, pressed the nape of her neck. Disbelief and desire made her gasp. Next, he bit her, sending enticing coldness through her. The moment broke when he arced his lean hips against her, beginning to pin her to the door.

She spun herself around to face him. What he wanted was clear, so clear – but the entire situation was impossible. If only she had the unmarred body of her dreams – but she didn’t. He had no idea. She couldn’t not let him know. _Wordburger: ethics_. It was reassuring, having the door at her back, ready for him to go, or her to flee.

“I can’t. I shouldn’t. There’s, I have a problem.”

Silence willed his face blank, keeping one arm elevated, left hand on the door. She was going to tell him about her cleft lip. And the game would be on.

Rabbit crossed her bare arms over her chest. “When I was on the ground with the Wretched I was raped by lepers one night and I’m not sure if I caught anything. The healers here gave me strong medicine. I’m supposed to be fine. But I’ll never know unless I get sick.”

Silence took a step back.

What were the chances? Barely thinking, he wrote again on the door.

_same as me_

Rabbit read, turned back to him. “What? Lepers?”

_one leper_

_that’s enough_

_had your healers’ dose – kill or cure_

Rabbit’s eyes went wide. “That’s what they call it, yes!”

_so: same: ok?_

“When – how – you were never Wretched, were you?”

_younger_

_sold to one_

_the People Eater_

Rabbit’s thoughts raced. “The Gastown warlord. Because you’re a full life? Like the Wives – the Sisters.”

Silence nodded. He watched as she turned her head, the import of this shifting her brows. Before he could regret his impulsiveness, he jerked off his jacket, his shirt. Twisting, he yanked down his waistband to show his other brand, in the small of his back. A concubine’s brand was always below the waist. Then, he wrote on the other side of the door.

_freed when he died_

_citizen now, can deal_

Rabbit glimpsed the beautiful turn of his bare back, marked low by overlapping scars: a keloided bar at an angle, crossing the upper half of a circular seal. He faced her again, and the front of his chest told the second half of the story. Lightly muscled trimness was marred by two sets of piercings: rings and a chain weighing his nipples, the skin near them livid with deeper scars. She fell against the door. This was why he’d shown her his neck brand, upstairs, said it was the citizen’s brand. Why he’d wanted to know who’d killed the People Eater, when they’d first met. A brush against her face made her nearly jump out of her skin. Silence was touching her mask, the mask that used to be his, and she was ready to die immediately.

Rabbit averted her face, curling in on herself. “I have more that’s wrong.” She breathed hugely. “A cleft lip. It’s why I wear a mask.”

Silence reached for the mask and gave it a pull. When she held up a hand to nudge his away, he shifted and wrote:

_told you about me_

_SHOWED_

It was true. He’d met her confession with two of his own – and a reveal. That was why you didn’t share much, among the Wretched, in the Wasteland.  Rabbit bowed her head with the debt of it. She whispered, “All right.”

Rabbit’s hands went heavy and clumsy as she undid the mask, passing it to her left hand so that she could open the door. He was, she knew, about to leave. 

Rabbit revealed her face, eyes downcast. Tense with curious hunger, Silence leaned in. Her upper lip was distorted, a triangular snarl jinxing up to the right, over strangely long, exposed teeth.  He saw the turned, glinting incisor he remembered glimpsing. Her upper lip looked softer than a regular mouth, very full where it wasn’t narrowed. The cleft plunged into the base of her right nostril, which blurred long and flat, compared to the balanced left side of her nose. Ugly, but fierce.

He reached up and touched the split. Rabbit trembled. He stroked the length of the cleft, first on the outside, then sliding under one edge. The flesh felt warm, slick beneath. Not spongy with disease, as others had been.

As he probed, a tear traced down her cheek.

Silence took his hand away. Rabbit braced, waiting for his judgement. In this last instant, without her mask, she could smell him. Healthy sweat, and leather, and guzzoline, which would always smell like danger to a Wretched.

Silence smiled in triumph. This was what it was, to have someone truly give in. This was power.

He bent his head and claimed her riven mouth with his own.

Rabbit gasped into the first kiss of her life. She turned her head to the press of it, his mouth opening against hers, felt her own lips alive, hot and hungry. He turned his head, tasting her from one angle, then another, and she reeled until he lifted away. 

His fingers, suddenly inside her mouth, startled her. Rabbit leaned back with a choking gasp. His hand had tasted of salt. She jerked aside to explain more. “My palate is open, too. The top of my mouth, cleft in the middle. It’s why I talk wrong.”

So her snarling mouth guarded another mysterious cleft into her very skull. If he kissed her, was it more intense than it was for someone normal? Silence tried it again. It seemed like it. Every kiss from her had an open feel, her revealed teeth bumping his, her upper lip’s curves swollen. This time, when he ground his crotch against her, her own hips came to meet him. Numb and jaded himself, the contrast between her eyes and her mouth, her fear and her desire, had him rapt. He was sold. He wrote behind her again.

_what do you want?_

Rabbit managed, “You don’t mind?”

Silence lifted a brow and tapped what he’d written.

She remembered what Desperate had said. _You could, you know. Gastown’s different…_

Silence saw her eyes opening beautifully after some happy thought, and her smile. That smile, with the cleft lip - that was why the mask. It was madness, sharp-toothed, ready to strip the flesh from your bones. Rabbit knew it: when she caught herself, she covered her mouth with her hand. The fear she had inspired in the Citadel’s depths at their first meeting brushed him as more excitement now.

Rabbit spoke quickly, to cover the hesitation she’d seen take him when she smiled. “It’s really good that you ask what I want! I – the two things are – I don’t want to get bred. And I don’t want to be hurt.” She lowered her face, hand still over her mouth, hoping she’d negotiated enough.

Silence’s first thought was that Rabbit hadn’t asked for any barter. Whether it was due to the Citadel’s economic strangeness or his looks, he’d take it, glad to not be out of pocket. No breeding was another relief. No injury? Also reasonable, when she had work to do. It did not occur to him that Rabbit did not want to feel pain, that pleasure could be separated from pain at all.

Rabbit took his thinking for hesitation. She shamed herself to add, “I can turn the lights out if you want.”

Silence shook his head and lifted the chalk. 

“You can’t talk with the lights gone.” When Silence agreed, she asked, “What else would you like?”

She felt Silence’s left hand on her shoulder, heavily. In the half-light, the only thing that made his near-perfection real was that touch. Then, he traced his hand down her torso, twisting her right nipple through the double layer of cotton she wore. She gasped. He moved down further, to her shaking waist, to rest in the heat of her crotch. By now his chest was a handspan from her. She could kiss his winged collarbones, if she dared. Instead, she could barely breathe, until he wrote.

_everything off_

Once she had shaken off her heavy boots, her clothes fell away easily. The mask had been the hard part. Terrified and exuberant, she gave in to the night's adrenaline. It was all one more turn in the fortunes that had made her Wretched, then swept her into the Citadel.

_show_

Silence clarified this Gastown command with a spin of his hand, something turning around. Rabbit gave herself a turn, awkwardly. Out of her ill-fitting clothes, she was slim, with an indented waist and small splayed breasts, one a handful larger than the other. There was a raw edge to her beyond her broken mouth, ruffled hair and sharp shoulder bones giving her a feral appeal. Silence caught his breath at her nipples, enticingly puffed, small full domes. He paused her with a touch.

Silence did what had been done to him so many times. He ran a hand over her nakedness, lifting her slightly fuller breast, valuing her flesh. She reached for him, hesitant. He seized her wrist, shaking his head, and forced her arm back to her side. For once in his life, he was going to call the shots. He wrote on the door:

_let me_

Rabbit turned to read. While she was distracted, he cupped the flat of his hand against her cunt.

She turned towards him with a small cry. Her wetness sent him probing. This was what every whore in Gastown faked with petroleum gel, as superior to that as Citadel aqua-cola was to Gastown groundwater. Clinging, yet light, it slicked and soothed his dry hand. The fresh realness of it was a reminder that she drank Citadel water _all the time_. A turn to slide the edge of his hand through shielding hair and lower lips met smooth, hot flesh.

He leaned to hook two fingers inside her, and they both swayed. Rabbit leaned towards her bed, barely able to stand: Silence took them both that way, eager for leverage. Kneeling among the cushions was perfect for them both.

Silence spread Rabbit’s narrow thighs, relieved to find, despite her slightness, a full triangle of darker body hair, curling tight from her wetness. Like her breasts, her labia were uneven, the taunting slips of flesh lusher on the left side. As he touched her, she twitched and flickered and hid small noises behind her hand. Her clit was sensitive. Her tight, silky opening was sensitive. The roof of her cunt was sensitive, and she stayed wet as he drilled her with his fingers. She was alive for him.

Silence was stronger than he looked, Rabbit thought. His hard, delicious hand had her on the brink of pain, then pleasure, again and again. On the outside, it was like when she touched herself, except somehow far better; then, he slid inside her, startling her with a quick spread of his fingers before filling her deeply. She held a hand over her own mouth, hiding her cleft lip and keeping quiet. But it was impossible not to whimper as he burrowed into her, then up. She arced her hips at the shocking goodness of it, three times? Four?

When he withdrew, her body arced again, following him. Rabbit closed her legs, everything between pulsing like a second slowing heartbeat. She watched as he sucked his fingers clean of her, then opened his trousers. He’d been half-dressed all this time. In the intensity, she had let her own hand fall away from her face.

Anxiety took her again. Rabbit sat up and reached where he did, towards his groin. So far she’d done the first two things a Citadel woman was supposed to do, saying what she’d wanted, asking him the same. It was so much harder than the Vuvalini made it sound. Now, there was a third, and it was excruciating. “I – I need to look at you.” He’d said he was healthy, but she needed to see.

Silence leaned back. He’d given his pipeworks a thorough salt-water scrub, and rigged himself into a leather cock-and-ball harness, snapped to its tightest setting, caging his stretched scrotum high. Rabbit gave him a tentative stroke, which he barely felt, save for her finger tips.

Some Wretched men had just given up on clothing, or at least trousers, rambling exposed and tanned. To Rabbit, Silence’s half-dressed exposure was far more shocking, pale skin against dark clothes and restraint. The skin of his cock drew her hand. It was so smooth and tender, over a spring steel core, that her finger pads felt rough against him. And his entire torso was smooth, stripped hairless. She felt the lightest stubble below leather and metal. Recovering herself, she slid a hand down his right thigh, where the muscles were thickest. There it was, a final scar, where the Citadel’s healers always gave a certain shot: the divot of flesh taken by the kill-or-cure’s needle.

After a moment, Silence wrapped his hand around hers and, with that surprising strength again, crushed both her fingers and his cock. She tried the crush, herself, and was rewarded with a hard breath and his shaft stiffening more. Then, he pressed the back of her head downwards. Rabbit looked up at him. “You’re sure?” He sucked his own fingers obscenely, then pointed at her and pressed her towards his crotch again. His meaning had never been clearer.

This had been a common barter amongst better-favored and younger Wretched, conducted in the scantest privacy. She couldn’t help witnessing it here and there. Now he wanted it from her, her broken mouth around his perfect flesh? She needed a third press to take the head of his cock into her mouth, still with exquisite hesitation. He tasted, again, of salt. She caught the smell of leather, warmed by his body.

Silence regretted the cockring: she seemed genuinely challenged. No, he didn’t. He liked Rabbit’s struggle, the soft touches of her tongue, the soft glances up at him. Her lower lip was tender and her upper lip, where it brushed him, was swollen, and her sharp upper teeth scraped him. She was gasping, yet returning, tasting him more, looking up yet again. After a few cycles of this, he took his cock back from her and undid the leather. It could take the best pipesucker in Gastown half the night to get him off, and that wasn’t what he wanted, here.

Silence locked his hand hard around his erection and worked himself, right over her lips. She didn’t get what he was doing, she was still trying, mouth parting, tongue soft. The contrast between that and his aching grip was too good. He had a perfect view. His hips rocked as he shot all over her cleft mouth, drawing back to finish over her light breasts.

Rabbit gasped as he came, feeling her mouth empty without his flesh. The bitter taste of his come, warm against her skin, was pure protein. Rabbit licked her lips and brushed drops into her mouth by reflex, understanding a hundred Wretched jokes she’d missed before.

After a moment to drink in the sight, Silence flung himself down against Rabbit. She was startled when he traced his mouth on hers again, tasting himself on her.  He reached between her breasts, too, and stroked the splashes there outwards, into her skin. With his sticky fingers, he finally made it to her nipples, rolling and pinching them.

Rabbit was enchanted that Silence was up against her, his whole body along her at last, kissing her deeper than ever. She had been wondering how bad she’d been, for him to take his cock back and make himself come. But if he was like this now…perhaps it had been all right.

After a moment, Silence half-shoved her back down and stared at her. Rabbit took this roughness in stride. He wiped his mouth, face hard and considering. Then he leaned onto his side and made the writing gesture, sending Rabbit scrambling weak-kneed for the slate. She couldn’t find it, but she did bring him chalk, and pointed at a space in the drawing beside the bed. In the dimness, up against him, she was able to make out:

_can I stay here tonight_

Rabbit’s eyes shone. “Yes! Do you want some water?”

Her handing Silence the glass bottle, weighted with a full liter of water, set the seal on this as a good night. He finally undressed, setting his weapons to his side. The further away he could stay from the Gastown crew tonight, the better. Showing up again at dawn, after the deal they’d pulled off, would give him more of a name. He’d seduced a worker, a woman, at the Citadel. It had all been novel, perverse, stimulating – a fitting conquest for the Gastown sophisticate he aspired to be. He warded off the heavy cost of what he’d had to offer in the end: the truth.

Sleep was going to be a problem, with the sliding pillows, strange noises, and tracking his weapons. He hadn’t always slept alone in his life: but the memories were vague, on the edge of his mind. Where the memories that the Thrall Rustlers hadn’t lashed and shocked out of him took refuge. He shut those thoughts down. This was the safest place for the night, with a locked door and a solid dealmate. He pretended to sleep.   

Rabbit watched him settling in with incredulous delight. Despite all his kisses, she felt better with a corner of a pillow hiding her lower face. He settled in between her and the wall. Once he was down, she tiptoed up to blow out the kerosene jars. Sliding back into her nest, the last thing she said was wry and gentle. “The second time I’ve done it…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Verse references: Rabbit's misfortune is foreshadowed in _A Wretched Life_ , and Silence earns the kill-or-cure in _Fear and Loathing in Gastown._
> 
> "If chrome's a drug, it's got to come from somewhere..." I said, and hypothesized 1930s-level drug manufacturing still ongoing. This would enable basic antibiotics, which in turn would enable blood bag drug transfusions; some kind of steroid/androgen, like what we see the Immortan receiving in the Furiosa comic; and ampthetamines, which are the simplest solution for the drug element of chrome. The Citadel's drug lab, run at considerable barter expense and ethical compromise - originally as a source of medicines for the Immortan and for cooking up chrome - is discussed in _A Handful of Dust_.


	10. As wretched as we once were

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rabbit has a lot to think about, applies Occam's Razor, and shares her Wretched history.  
> Notes: Genfic chapter.

Rabbit had awoken when faint dawn warmed the louvers. Silence moved when she did. She had watched him dress and mask, and then let him out, as silent as he was. His only signals to her had been to wave goodbye, and point upstairs.

When he had gone, Rabbit had promptly checked her possessions. Everything was still there. Weightless with relief, she had gone back to bed and nestled against the cushions he’d left, which smelled, oh so slightly, of guzzoline. When the louvers grew properly bright, she tore herself away. It had taken her this long to think of Desperate again. Could it possibly have gone as well for her, with the men she’d chosen?

For the main Citadel meals, Rabbit slipped away with her food to one of the Pumps niches nearby, to eat in private. Today, as she was returning her breakfast plate to the mess hall, she saw Des. Rabbit dashed over, relieved to be spared a searching trip.

“You’re okay!”

Des looked glossier than usual. “Why shouldn’t I be? It went chrome, all right. He was determined to get his barter’s worth. But so did I.” With a closed-lipped smile, Des ran her fingers through her own hair.

“You’re okay,” Rabbit repeated.

Des sighed, impatiently. “I told you I’d be fine.”

Rabbit paused. Should she say something about her own night, and how right Des had been? If it wasn’t for the guzzoline on her pillows, she’d barely believe it had happened herself. She lowered her eyes. “I need to get to work…”

When Rabbit arrived in Corpus’ office again, nobody was there. Two hinged slates were waiting for her on the desk. Citadel messages went back and forth on these. It was unusual to receive two at once. She unhooked one and opened it. Its two sides were packed with crabbed handwriting: from the History Man.

_Hello Rabbit – Affairs and stairs make it hard to check in (my KNEES). Repetitive pedantry so far with this lot. Main crew’s in the Wellhead from noon onwards. C. says they’ve put some clerk in with you? ANY problems – come down ASAP. Wordburger: auspicium melioris aevi!_

She smiled behind her mask. Among the Wretched, the History Man had taken her and several other young people under his protection. He had been swept into the Citadel on the day everything changed. The day after, he had done something unprecedented: left the Citadel alive to bring others up, including her.

She opened the second slate. It held a simple message from a complicated person. Spark’s Citadel bro had taken up with one of the Citadel's feral recruits, Ballard. An outsider, he took Rabbit at face value and then some. Impressed by her Pumps team status, he was distant but respectful.                                                           

_Ballard here, news –_

_healers have Jumper 6 days_

_me = watching Spark!_

_when J’s out, let’s talk S. & long term_

Rabbit was stricken by the two messages together. The History Man’s care of her had kept her able to have a soul against the world’s cruelty. Now she had the chance to do the same for Spark. And how odd, that Ballard, from some vague settlement, wrote with the same clipped style that Silence used. This must be how writing was changing outside the Citadel in the few places that still used it.

She had time to compose reassuring replies, put them ready to be taken, and think. There was nothing else to do until Silence arrived with the maps.

Her Wretched life had, and had not, prepared her for the night before. Among the Wretched, sex was a sign of fitness, a commodity, a seal on companionship, a way to be violent or to suffer. In the Citadel, desire fulfilled was a privilege. Once, it had been a reward for the Immortan’s full-life people. In the changed Citadel, anyone could come together as they wished – in a right and good and non-exploitative way.

Rabbit understood what they hoped for, thanks to the History People. Their tales of Before-time romance had diverted her imagination. The History Woman had told Rabbit about her own romances and the lovers from the old stories: Elizabeth and Darcy, Prue and Kester, Finn and Rey and Poe. The History Man had praised the few committed pairs and groups among the Wretched.

Living with these contradictions and her isolating cleft lip, Rabbit had given her heart away in secret as she liked: to the left Treadmill guard, to the magnificent misfit Rictus, to Imperator Furiosa. Silence had been in the same unreal zone of appealing authority. Until last night. Until now. Because the door was opening, and a War Pup was letting him in again. Rabbit handed the pup her slates and shooed him along.

After the door shut, they simply stared at each other.

Silence peeled his mask off. Like the day before, he was cool and impassive.

Then, he smiled: wicked as a Wretched thief, confident as any Citadel full-life.

Rabbit laughed in relief. “Yesterday I was sitting here all day thinking how handsome you are. Today…” She shook her head and reached for the maps he had brought back. “I have to do four of these. I have to, if I’m going to see the drilling.”

Silence shrugged. He put the maps down and made a wide gesture at them, then settled in at the guard’s bench from the day before. Yesterday, he had handed her a map for tracing. Today it was in Rabbit's hands. Being able to choose the first one was bewildering. She picked the worst of the lot. Its geological lines were overlain with complex notations about iron ore deposits. Once she had chosen, she turned to ask if it was all right.

Silence had fallen asleep.

He was still sitting upright in elegant withdrawal, his chin turned to one shoulder. It was her first opportunity to look at him for more than a sidelong moment. What on earth had he seen in her? Especially if, as a former warlord’s slave, released to use his full-life and knowing for a stronghold, he approached the Sisters’ status?

The note from the History Man reminded her that she had tools to unpick what she didn’t know. She chose one. _Wordburger: Occam’s Razor._ The simplest reasons were because she was _there_ – they’d been thrown together under powerful orders – and she could understand him. Reading was a Wasteland rarity and a Citadel privilege. Corpus had taught War Boys and officers to read, and there had always been literate oddities like flesh mechanics and quartermasters. But few retained more than being able to read salvage labels or keep ledgers. Besides, Des’ _Gastown is different_ echoed the History Man’s colourful stories about the place. She was there, she’d do, and...her thoughts hovered over how to say it...there was some trust. 

It all burdened her with another challenge: not giving Citadel secrets away to him. The entire Pumps team been warned about being wary around the Gastown crew, by Corpus and History together. It was complicated, between the Citadel and Gastown. They needed Gastown's fuels for vehicles and the hoarded technology that helped run the Citadel's well system. But after the History Man's recent misadventures there, the Citadel was angry with Gastown. As Rabbit understood it, Gastown had named a heedless slaver, the Outcrier, as the person to negotiate with the Citadel, and the Citadel's Council loathed this. At the same time, the History Man had fallen in with the Gastown men who were here helping the Citadel today. Rabbit was relieved that Silence had come here with the helpful ones. But she knew she had to be careful yet.

One of the biggest secrets was hers, but it was still safe. There were so many other things to talk about that it could stay buried. Even if she had to use it.

* * *

When Silence jerked upright, the light in the room was different. Rabbit, over at the drinks stand, turned: she had her mask off, setting down a water tumbler. She clicked the mask back, hastily. “You’re awake. Water?”

He indulged in two tumblers. After a near-sleepless night, he’d stuck his head in the guards' quarters, heard Mangler raving happily, and endured some gibing from Force. The Citadel’s breakfast had been easier for him than most food: without a tongue, eating was an effort. Afterwards, he’d had to put up with another dire hour in the conference room. Starch and boredom had dragged him into exhaustion by the time he was sent back with the maps. Now, after Rabbit’s promising greeting, he’d spent half the day asleep. Annoyed, he wondered why the Citadel didn’t do more in the cool of the night, like Gastown did.

Rabbit had slid into her work again. Apart from her excuse for a bed, having her had been very good indeed, on a par with his first free, chosen encounter. That man, a refinery worker on the gadabout one Murderdome night, had never removed his mask, or given a name. Silence had yearned to strip the mask away. With Rabbit, he had.

Would he have enjoyed it as much with Rabbit if she’d been male? A wiry, cleft-lipped Wretched boy, with light stubble under the mask? Yes, he decided. Though it would have gone differently, and brought him less face. Women were softer to feel, but often tougher at enduring long sessions. That, and their rarity, was why they were always a premium item, in Gastown.

Now he was curious. He went to the board and wrote:

_have a brother?_

Rabbit took this calmly. “I don’t know. And it’s a problem, at the Citadel.”

Silence tilted his head and rolled one hand.

“That means more?”

He nodded.

Rabbit stared at the map table for a minute, her hands in her lap. Finally, she said, “I can tell you my story. You already know the bad part.”

Silence sat next to her again. And, again, Rabbit began to tell a story that chilled and fascinated him. Though he disagreed with her almost immediately about already knowing the worst part.

* * *

Of my whole life, the first thing I remember is being somewhere dark and cool. Someone was being kind to me. But I was trying to hide – it was very important – and I was afraid.

It isn’t much. But when I was taken up from the Wretched into the Citadel, the History Man used it to find out where I came from.

He had a wordburger for this way: Occam’s Razor. You think clearly, to cut through to the simplest answer to a question. The closest dark, cool place near the Citadel was the Citadel itself. The place for a child to be treated kindly was near its mother. The only mothers in the Citadel were the milkers or the breeders. We went to their medical ledgers, and found me.

My mother was a breeder, brought in from a raid. The ledgers said she was bred up when she was taken. She had twins. One of us died, and I was...like this. The flesh mechanic then let my mother keep me. The breeders raised the girl children themselves. My mother managed to not get bred again for some time. When she did, she had twins again, stuck together. This killed her. And the flesh mechanic had changed to a different man, the Organic Mechanic. He said I should go. He left a note about me. _Girl, 1600 days:_ _unilateral cleft lip and palate, mangled speech_. _Breeding dam history of serious mutant births. Discarded day 10,445._

I think I was five-six when I was cast out. Used-up Wretched from the Treadmill or the Galleria, the Citadel would throw them out from a hundred and fifty meters. The used-up breeders and failed Wives were sent down to the Wretched on the Treadmill.  A few of the other breeders were going - the Mechanic had done a cull - and I went down with them. I had enough fabric to wrap myself, and my first memories. That meant I knew being Wretched was wrong and life could be different. This was a bad thing to know, in the dust.

One of the breeders had been Wretched before. She showed us the way of it, while she survived. We lived by the water drops and followed the shade around the towers. At night, it was cold. During the day, if you didn’t have shade, your skin would cook. My first dust storm terrified me, until I learned to half-bury myself. For food we ate insects, forage. Everyone says the Wretched are cannibals. Not all of us. Human meat was for the powerful alone. Sometimes we’d eat clay.  

Maybe I stole, a little. I stole someone’s water bottle. That’s death, out there. I killed them when I did that. But I needed it to live myself.  I ran errands for the Lepers, and I listened. That was when I learned about the Wasteland. Some from other Wretched, and some from the stones themselves, hearing old voices on the days I ate clay.

The Citadel think the Wretched were a chaos, a mob, but they were a hierarchy, like up there. If you had a clean skin and were strong, that was best. Those with lumps were tolerated. If your skin showed sick, or you were weak, that was low. Mutations like mine, it varied. There was a lot in being a strong fighter or a clever talker. I am neither. The Mongrels gang collected the best fighters: they controlled the water. The Lepers were the lowest, most terrifying of us, all sick or afflicted. They had their own gang, and controlled the shade.

When I was twelve-thirteen, I was on my own. That was when I met the History People. They came here the same way many Wretched used to, hearing the good stories about the Citadel and coming with hope. And then...well. The History Woman was the most amazing person I’d ever seen, ink in her skin and silver hair. Her first day here, she did a beautiful Tell for the children, asking nothing in return. I tried to tell back to her with knowing about the Wretched. When she understood that she was staying Wretched, she let me spend time with her. She told me history, showed me how to live. How to stand, and speak better, and think. She gave me names to choose from. The stories she told were so vivid in my mind that I began to draw in the sand. For a time I helped her look after Wretched children. Then, she was taken by the Citadel. I was sad, for a while.

After she was gone, the History Man took to talking to me. I would always listen: we remembered the History Woman together. He’d Tell about the whole world to talk his loneliness away. After a while, I understood enough to ask questions back. He liked this. He set me to recall and count and calculate. I felt like I was living the right way, like the History Woman showed me.

I never really got the feel of the human Before-time, the cities and wars. I liked it best when the History Man talked about the Wasteland and the World, stone and water, things that were beautiful and important, and all the other creatures that used to live before the Anthropocene. What he said showed how time is so huge, none of us matter, Wretched or Citadel – even us killing the world is only a moment.

Among the Wretched there were girls and old women. If you were any good the Citadel would take you, like it took Des; if you were half-good, Gastown would. We were few enough that a man wanted to have me, once. He came out of the Wasteland with his own cleft lip, a very bad one, both sides. He wanted to live with people, be someone. He was all right. Maybe I let him touch me, a little. But he tried the Mongrels’ fighting pits, the blood fights. If you lived, you got to be a Mongrel. He didn’t live. I was sad, for another while.

The most terrible time came the day the Immortan died. The Sisters brought up a handful of afflicted, then the History Man and a few others. It didn’t make any sense, compared to the Citadel before. The hierarchy was broken. Some Wretched acted like the world was ending again. There was water twice in one day, everyone had energy. The night was terror. Anyone who had a grudge, a desire, they acted on it. Someone had a grudge against me.

That was when I was raped. Lepers. I didn’t fight. The History Woman had told me, if it ever came to that, to go inside my soul, where they couldn’t touch me. They thought I was broken. It meant I could slip away and hide amongst the stones. I wanted to stay there and be bones for the crows. I was sad and tired, so tired of fighting all the time. That’s when it’s easiest for the Wasteland to take you. But what happened the next day was stranger than that.

Soon after dawn, I heard the History Man saying my name and others over the tannoy. I went to the Treadmill. Nobody touched me along the way, not me or the others who were called. We were uplifted.

It’s not very far away, from the dust to the Citadel, but it’s another world. Among the Wretched I’d lived half my life’s length: here I’m a girl, again. Some say I have all the choices now as a woman, then they box me in as the Wretched-with-the-harelip. Others here get angry at things that make me sad, but when they get sad, they let it eat them. All the treasures are here, engines, books, old science. Yet there’s so much they don’t know. Maybe it’s better that they don’t.

Inside the Citadel the History said he wanted me to do something necessary, so that I would always stay. I agreed. Until we could decide what, I shadowed him on the Pumps team. They should be called the hydrologists and plumbers, but most of the Citadel can’t handle those wordburgers. History’s main Before-time smarts were as a geologist, one who studied rocks and water. He knows more than Corpus likes.

Corpus is like me, born afflicted. But he was the Immortan's son, and the Citadel needs his knowing. He kept his teams ignorant so he’d never be thrown off the Wretched drop. He can’t do that any more, but he still chooses who gets his own smarts. He liked me better than we expected. I was good to his pups that help him, and I remembered his splendid brother. He put me before the Council as a woman for his team. I heard him say that if they hated to look at him, listen to him, he’d give them a woman as difficult to see and hear as he was. But I can be all right. If I have time to think about the words, and to practice, I can Tell clear enough. The pictures I draw help the Council understand quickly, without words. It helps most of all when I wear a mask, like this one.

Now you look like they do when they’re angry here. Is it about Corpus? I don’t mind him. I feel how Corpus feels. He’s as wretched as we once were. He’s trapped in his body, surrounded by people he fears, even as he wants to live, to stay alive.  

Like I always did, except for that one night.

* * *

 Rabbit had traced her way through this story, the soft mineral rasp of graphite underlining her words. She put the graphite down. “That’s all.”

She set another completed map aside, and stared at the bare bulb beneath the glass table, remote.

Silence felt unwontedly still inside. She’d spent half the story saying History-person-this and History-person-that. What echoed in him were her long, hungry days amidst the stones, and her retreat into herself, when she’d submitted and survived. He put a hand on her left shoulder.

Immediately, Rabbit covered it with her right hand, turning back to him, and the present. Her eyes creased, slightly. She might have been smiling at him beneath the mask.

There was little comfort in his world: sex or drugs. In his experience, one of them was easier for someone working at a desk to fit in. Silence caressed her shoulder, digging his fingers into a knot in her neck. She made a pleased, startled noise, and her eyes fluttered closed. Encouraged, he ran his hand down her arm, her side, into her lap and her crotch.

Rabbit almost fell off her seat, wild-eyed. “I can’t do anything here!” She shoved a hand between them, a gesture between pushing him away and reaching for him.

This rare rejection spurred him to anger. But he lived by reading others' nuances and unpicking scant words. She'd said _here._ More, there was something she wasn't saying. He realized she might suffer if she didn’t succeed at her work. Her diligence led him to believe it would be severe: her quiet, that it would be humiliating. Silence felt his mouth twist. So much for the Citadel's vague superiority. They didn't need to enslave their people any more. Rabbit's story showed him that the Wasteland outside did that for them. This place was Triumverate yet. At least, with his indenture, he knew when he was free and when he wasn't, and had the right to his own dealings. He leapt up and wrote on the board:

_deal again tonight?_

“I thought Des was already set up?”

_you and I_

_your room_

She was curled on her seat, one arm protectively against her chest. She looked down, her hand turning against her heart. Softly, she said, “Okay.”

Silence erased the board, then stepped back to her slowly. She watched, very still, as he did what he had been supposed to all along: removed the map she had finished and put a new one in front of her. He had seized a map at random. He regretted it: it opened with a particularly nauseating spread of colour. But it made Rabbit's eyes thoughtful. She lowered both hands to caress the map, relaxing. “This map is the land under Gastown. This here, it’s the canyon between us. And this is an oil deposit.” She pointed at a magenta blob.

Refinery smarts! This confirmed his thinking. Those with this type of knowing in Gastown were locked down the hardest of all. Mangler was with the Gastown contingent for a reason. Silence flung himself back down beside Rabbit and rolled his hand. “I can tell you more?” He nodded, awake on all levels. He’d listen for what he could understand. Each moment she described the map had value. After his mistake, he’d stay back while she was at the desk.

Despite this, her fear had left her. Her incline back towards him as he sat was full of promise. Rabbit began to tell, a third time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Verse notes: For more on Citadel/Gastown politics in this 'verse there's [Fear and Loathing in Gastown](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6654655). The Outcrier refuses to free a former Wife of the Immortan unfortunate enough to be one of his concubine-prizes for the Gastown Race, and the Citadel races to try and win her back.


	11. A Wasteland survivor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Des spends a night soothing sharpshooters to get what she wants - and learns the forbidden desire of a former Bullet Farmer. Notes: Canon-typical violence discussion. Mythic!Max. Explicit het sex. Gun play.

After her own breakfast, Des did nothing. She went back to her white bed to recoup and laze. She lounged as if she could soak the peace of it into her bones, so that she could always have it.

The Citadel's endless work and people were typical of settlements. Wasteland life, both wandering and Wretched, had a slower pace. In the Wasteland, often, you were stuck. When the transports were low on guzzoline and your tribe short on food and water, doing nothing extended supplies. She had been valuable enough, in those days, to not be sent out scouting. Women who went out were either tough as stone or didn’t come back. Or they took themselves out because they didn’t want to return.

When she had been Wretched either everything was happening at once, or nothing was. There had been long hours of nothing in the Mongrels’ shade, waiting for the maggots to get fat or someone to lose their blood fight. They had whiled away the hot, dry, idle hours: napping, sparring, screwing, rolling dice, or telling tall tales. Not the true Before-time ones that would make your head hurt. Stories light as dust devils: what the Immortan did before he came to the Citadel; the luck of Double Johnson, the most fortunate mutant alive; the misfortunes of Mad Max, the haunted hero.

Des thought through some of these stories as she lolled. The Mongrels’ chieftain had said he, personally, knew Max wasn’t alive any more because he’d defeated Max in hand to hand combat. He claimed he’d won only because one of Max’s ghosts distracted him, out for vengeance. Anyone who saw Max from here on out was seeing another ghost. The History Man swore Max was real – that Max was the man in the mob who’d swept him up to the Citadel the day of the revolution. That he’d gone back out into the Wasteland in search of a Green Place.

They were both good stories…

Des slept.

The westering sun, slanting into her face, woke her. She went to the Milking Mother’s baths to groom herself, and caught the last of the evening meal at the mess hall. Then it was time (already!) for a casual stroll past the conference room. There, Des could scoop up her breeder for the night, Koch.

She was thinking that perhaps they called it the conference room because everyone in there tried to con and one-up each other when she was stopped by a guard. Des tried to brazen it out. “Evening, Smith.” Fear chilled her. She hadn’t seen the laughing Vuvalini like this, before: violence at the ready, showing why she was a Wasteland survivor. Des had seen Smith shoot. She’d never seen Smith miss.

Smith held her rifle across herself, in the middle of the hallway. Her eyes were steely. “There’s only one reason for you to be here, with Gastown on this level. I don’t know if it’s a reason I should allow.”

Des put her hands on her hips. “You heard me talking to Rabbit about it. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

Smith said, “I did, but to Rabbit. I didn’t think she’d go ahead, let alone pull it off!”

No wonder Rabbit had been slinking scared last night. Smith’s put-out tone made Des laugh. “Too late now. The deal is done.”

Smith’s mouth twitched in a moment’s amusement before she went stern. “Who is it?”

“The guards for their bloke who’s like Corpus.”

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

Smith yelped, “All of them at once?”

“Turns.” Before Smith could protest, she added, “One a night.”

Smith looked thoughtful. “Is one of them blonde? Young, crazy eyes?”

“I haven’t seen anyone like that. There’s four smarts blokes and the four guards,” she said, semi-accurately. “I had a slab of meat last night named Mangler. Tonight, it’s their sharpshooter. Some Bullet Farm bloke gone Gastown. Both of them are dark. There’s the giant one, he’s tomorrow, and the last one – he was masked, with one eye showing. One blue eye, really blue, like the sky. Is that what you mean?”

Des smiled as she kept Smith talking. Having had shooting lessons with Smith, Des knew her weakness. To Smith, after her tight tribal life, all women at the Citadel were her tribeswomen. Sure enough, Smith relaxed. “Your tally matches ours. They’ve all checked out. You armed?”

“What do you think?” Des pulled her rough dagger, then slid it back. “The first one was a live maggot, but no trouble. Not the bad kind, anyway.”

Smith nodded. She chewed her lip. She sighed. Finally, she said, “I was young once, trying to have a kid. So. You go ahead, but, get a tell off tonight’s one, this Bullet Farm one. Find out what his story is, and let me know tomorrow.”

Des blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Is it a fluke that this one’s with Gastown? Or does the Citadel need to watch our backs against Bullet Farm plus Gastown?”

“Oh.” Des said. “I can do that.”

* * *

Des thought of that an hour later. Because, despite the tall, russet-tan man in her bed, things weren’t going well at all. She was reduced to rubbing Koch’s bald head and whispering, “If you don’t like women, just say so.” Mangler’s all-comers enthusiasm was what the Wasteland expected from its fighters. Having any preference was a Before-time weakness. If Koch admitted it, she could barter a little extra out of him for lying on his behalf.

Koch reached out and lifted her thick hair, let it fall, slowly, with admiring rue. His arm was strong, clean-lined muscles. “It’s not you. Being here at the Citadel, with a breeder, I’m remembering things.”

 _Get a tell off him_ , Smith had said. “What’s the story? Tell me about it?” Des folded her hands under her chin and looked up at him through her lashes.

He started to talk like it was a relief. “Last time I was here, I was with my brother. Ripsaw. You would’ve been his type.” Des understood immediately. The man he was talking about was dead. “The Bullet Farm took pups in, after raids. Me and my bro, we were both made Bullet Farm cadets. The Bullet Farmer said he didn’t need to abuse women to get decent sons, that those who fought together were all the family we needed. He respected us. We worked hard, did a good job. We were honest, out for justice.”

“Strongholds can’t support everyone who wants to get in. At the Bullet Farm, everyone got a chance. We didn’t play games like Gastown or do Wretched weirdness like the Citadel. It was easy. Come to Justice Hour and let the Bullet Farmer’s revolver choose if you lived or died.  Spin the chamber, maybe a bullet takes you, maybe it doesn’t….it’s random. It’s fair. Either way was better than the Wasteland.”

“Fair,” Des echoed. She’d heard about the Bullet Farm after a few Wretched weeks and decided it sounded even worse than the base of the Citadel. Maybe it was all right for the Bullet Farmer’s cadet sons. Most Wretched who made it past the pistol wound up mining, in a sulfur-and-lead pit, in the blazing sun. At least at the base of the Citadel there was shade and water sometimes and … you could stop. You didn’t work all day until you died of it.

“Then, the Fury Road. Bag of Nails thieves a bunch of girls, one of them just a kid.”

Des frowned. “That’s not what they say here.”

Koch harrumphed. Des admired his hawk’s profile. “Not what they say now. Not what anyone says, if they like not having scurvy. On the Fury Road, they’d run until nightfall. At the end only us Bullet Farmers could keep up. We were closing in on them. Then, the Farmer shot a crow that we startled. One shot, on the wing in the dark. A great shot. But nothing went right after that.”

“The Bag of Nails was cornered, taking potshots at us. She got lucky. One shot hit our headlamp, shattered it in the Bullet Farmer’s face.  Glass and fire blasted out his eyes. We stopped to patch him up. He wasn’t having any of it. Do or die. Justice or nothing. It was up to us, his trust in us. Nails and the Rig had started up again, ahead, but slow. We could have caught them.”

“One minute we were rolling. The next there was some metal sound, the whole works stopped. Right when we were figuring it out, a jug of guzzoline landed in our cab, and it was lit. I grabbed the Farmer and dove out – hit the ground hard, shielding him. My brother took the other side. It blew. It was burning. The fire let me see someone kill my brother. The Farmer heard him, lunged for the killer with a scream like that crow.  I watched them grapple. They were close enough for me to see the killer’s face, one time, in the fire.”

Des was levered up on one elbow, fascinated. “What did he look like?”

Still staring at the ceiling, Koch spread his hands. “Nobody and anybody. About my age, no beard. Shorter. He’d been eating, but his gear was mediocre. I want to say he was a whitefella, but it was hard to be sure. He fought like - ” Koch’s lips tightened. “He fought filthy. He knew he was dead if he lost.”

“The last thing I remember was the Peacemaker’s guzz tank blew, too.”

“I woke up two days after. One of the Polecat rigs had picked me up. They told me later they were going to grill me if I hadn’t opened my eyes. While I was alive, I was staying fresh. That’s Gastown for you. I was in one piece but half my gear was gone, including one boot. The bastards said they found me that way, called me Lefty for days. My hearing was shot for a while. I wasn’t thinking much. I kept seeing what I’d seen. Let them haul me back to Gastown. We got back to a civil war. Suited me fine. I told them to call me after the Farmer’s favorite right hand gun, the one he called Koch. I picked a side, the Arbiter’s, their lawman, and loaded my own gun. We won.”

“I still haven’t been able to go back to the Bullet Farm. Ol’ Captain’s running it now. He was all right, knew what was what. But he never had the justice about him. I hear a lot of the workers cleared out one night.”

Des had heard the same. Except at the Citadel, they’d said slaves had escaped.

“Besides, they say everyone comes to Gastown. The crowds at the last Amnesty were insane. But some day…” Koch looked at Des at last, deep eyes burning into hers. “When the man who didn’t kill me arrives, he’s dead ten times over. Who does all that and doesn’t slit the last throat, to be sure? What kind of death wish has he got? Why one boot?”

Des remembered one of the Citadel’s most popular Tells, about the War Boy who’d helped the Wives and died historic. “What if he never comes?”

“Then it’s how I thought it was, when I woke up. That there’s no justice any more.”

The tale of blood and vengeance was the kind she’d always liked best. Des wrapped one leg around him, fondly. “I could kill him for you, if I see him.”

That got a smile out of him. Koch tapped her nose. “What you going to do, screw him to death?”

Des pouted. “I can shoot, you know.”

Koch leaned up on one elbow. “You’ve been holding out on me. You shoot?”

“You know they brought in the Imperator’s tribe, the Vuvalini. They’ve taught some of us, the tougher ones, and now they’ve got an all-women shooting squad.”

“You have an all women shooting squad?” Koch seized her shoulders, excited. “How’d you make the cut? You’re a milker.”

“I wasn’t, always. For a while I was in the Wasteland. You don’t live if you can’t fight. I was in a raiders’ gang.” Life in a roving raider gang as a girl bride had been discomfort, fear, and danger. The man she had to call her husband kept her with his gear and barely spoke a word to her. It had only gotten worse when she’d been pregnant at sixteen. After the baby took sick and died on one of their thousand-kilometer runs, she’d had enough. She’d killed her stinking husband in his sleep and deserted, with another man and his vehicle.

That second time, there had been no pretense of marriage. They were both apocalypse-born. He told people they met that he owned her. She went along. They’d learned quickly that it brought a better price when she sold herself. That time felt like an eternity, mostly because they fought more and more. It wasn’t in her to believe that he wouldn’t betray her, one day, for someone younger or a settlement place. After a final screaming fight, he’d driven off and left her. He was human enough to do it at a settlement, and to not run her down, despite her holding one of his weapons in her hand. 

“I figured I’d do as well on my own.” Alone, she had reeled through ups and downs, screwing and killing, thieving and running. Once, as the price of her life, she’d betrayed her old settlement to another gang. When they’d arrived, the place was ashes. What they’d done to her had come to them. Des had spat on the ground and paid another price that night. She had abandoned that group as they passed through the Citadel. Or they had dumped her: it was hard to say. She hadn’t resisted losing herself in the mob, hoping for a fresh start.

Koch knew none of this. His eyes were burning again, staring at her. “You were one of those ones. They warned us about you, at the Bullet Farm. Watch out for Wasteland screws too good to be true. Bait types.”

A smile curled her lips. “Maybe, a little.” This was the sidelong Wretched way of saying _I’m guilty as sin_. “What did they say?”

“You’d seduce us and shank us for our gear.”

“Maybe it would’ve been worth it.” Des leaned in and bit his neck. He groaned at her carnivorous touch. She hissed in his ear, “Did you ever have one of us? Did you risk it?”

Koch shuddered. “I know how it’s done.” The raw edge of his voice betrayed what he wanted.

Des sat up and reached into her wraps, clustered on her side of the bed, this time. She drew her crude dagger out from them. Koch, at the same time, reached into his slump of clothing and drew out a hand firearm, a heavy pistol. Des couldn’t help stiffening within her own body, covering her breasts with the dagger. Koch smiled, the first she’d seen him do it: wide enough for his two bullet teeth to glint.

A hot silence fell.

Des murmured, “One. Two. Three.”

At the count of three, they exchanged weapons. This was Wasteland trust. Each remained armed, but at a disadvantage, with the other’s weapon. When Des had the pistol, she levered up and mounted Koch, straddling his firm waist. She quickly flicked out her overhead light, turning the room into a stone cave, dark to their eyes. Koch’s good looks were obscured. She felt her thighs were soft against the sweating hardness of his body, and tensed her own muscles.

“How many times did you do it?” Des asked, stroking the gun against his waist, across his guts. “Leave behind your law and justice for a taste of a Wasteland hard case?” She flicked off the pistol’s safety, and felt his start: he’d heard her do it. Des grinned. Let him fear.

Des eased back down his body, running his cock along her slickening cunt. When she was far back enough to look down and see him rising and straining, she reached with her free hand and rolled his foreskin around. Beneath the suedelike skin, the head of his cock gleamed, its slit moist against her pressing thumb. The clean length of him tempted her. “Think I’ll have a taste of you.”

There was only one way to be this vulnerable. As Des bowed her body and sucked his cock into her avid mouth, she jammed the pistol against his hip, where leg met thigh, where an artery pulsed. She wasn’t one to threaten a man’s life for nothing. Des deep-throated him to full hardness, laving the length of him with her tongue, lingering to suck the sensitive head, lapping out its fluids. Koch groaned, and his balls tightened. Des lifted the pistol and moved.

Soon Des was back in her original positon, mounted with her thighs spread across Koch’s waist. “They didn’t like me on the shooting squad, here. They said,” Des leaned in, letting her lips brush his cheek, “I was reckless. I wasted ammo. I liked shooting too much.” Des curved her body higher, rubbing her breasts across his face. He caught a nipple between his teeth, and she felt the bullet’s bite. She cried out.

With one big hand, Koch grabbed her hips and pulled. “Get on me,” he breathed, in as much of a hurry as if they were between a rock and a dune.

Des was glad she’d lazed earlier. He was perfect to ride, his cock straight, his whole body long rather than wide. After last night’s relentless bashing by Mangler, her cunt was sensitive, sucking tight around Koch’s shaft. Koch’s free hand ranged between crushing her hip and her ribs, seeking to seal her cunt tighter to him, but that wouldn’t get him off. She wormed and growled until she realized what an idiot she was. She pointed the pistol. “Leave off my ribs, bullet boy. You’ll give me every drop of you, and it might be the last thing you do.” Some night vision had returned to her. She taunted his nipples with the mouth of the firearm.

 “Not my heart – not over my heart,” he said. Des lifted the firearm.

Now he was bucking up underneath her, sending her sliding and rocking, her own heart hammering at the risk of it all. She braced one hand on the wall behind her bedstead. Secure, she took the pistol, growing heavy and sweaty in her grip, and pointed it at her pillow beside his ear.  “Should I see if it’s loaded? Would that be fair?”

Koch came silently, stiff as metal, crushing her hips with both hands. Des felt it, the hot repeated shot inside her, the loss of friction.

When his breath drew normally, Des slid off to perch on the edge of the bed. His come made her feel silky and dirty, incontinent. She tightened her slick thighs to trap every drop of him. After his grip, something in her side ached. It would have been good to lie down, but she never, ever would have from this posture, in the Wasteland. Now she could see Koch perfectly in the moonlight. For one moment he was gazing at the ceiling or memory again, blank as the corpse he had been left for, on the Fury Road.

Then Koch held the dagger out, its rag-wrapped handle facing her.

Des returned his gun with one hand, reclaiming the dagger with the other.

The moment Koch had his gun, he came to life.  He was on his feet, tall and dangerous again. “Right. I’m out.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say, _you don’t have to rush, this is Citadel_. But she held back. He had spoken of buying her fourth night. She kept her eyes narrowed, dagger curled at the ready: all Wasteland risk. If she didn’t break the feeling of it, he might bring his handsome, hollow self back again. 


	12. This place, what it does

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smith of the Vuvalini helps her wife deal with the Citadel’s taxing present.   
> Notes: Femslash! Explicit F/F sex. Light hurt/comfort.

Smith watched Des slipping off with the Bullet Farm stray. Was it a decent decision, letting Des continue her calculated whoring? It was the only security risk Smith had caught here in the Green Tower. Then again, she’d heard Des trying to get this madness started with her own ears, argue for the right to keep going. And Smith couldn’t help seeing in Des both a younger version of her wife, with her enduring, defiant femininity, and of her own rough-edged, child-hungry self.

Some women could take or leave having a child. Many were clearly relieved when it didn’t happen. Smith had envied them. She remembered those hundreds of days when the possibility of her own children had slipped away. It was unfair, when she felt strong enough to invite Wasteland wayfarers to share her bedroll for exactly that reason, when she had enough love waiting to be mother and father in one. Later, when it was clear she wasn’t lucky, she had succumbed to rebellious wildness. Once the climate became too bad to even grow weed, screwing around had been the one reliable escape from it all.

That had been fifteen oldyears past, a crazy blur, a despairing time. Falling in love at last, lavishing someone with care and protection, had tamed Smith’s wild ways. Today, Smith and her wife revelled in their adopted mini-tribe of Citadel pups. Des, herself, still had a chance at her own child. She was seizing it with both hands. Smith hoped Des would have better luck, especially tonight. She could just imagine teaching a spry little sharpshooter.

Smith did a quick walkby of the Worksman’s quarters. The guard on the door had a filthy grin under his impressive mop of hair. Still, her gut was quiet about him. She dared to leave the night to the shift of War Boys. Some rest would freshen her for the remaining days of the Gastown visit. Tomorrow, she’d get a story off Des and set her up with a little extra security.

She strode back to her room. She had her wife’s work schedule memorized. If Smith was lucky, if some Citadel crisis hadn’t kept her in the Infirmary, Gillian would be there.

When Smith opened the door, their Citadel chamber had no illumination but moonlight from a vertical window-slit. Smith thought she was walking to the bed quietly. Then a woman’s voice, warm and lilting, said, “You can have some light, if you need it.”

A thin moonbeam fell across the bed and the woman waiting there. The light caught pewter hair, smoothed burnished, sandwashed skin. Smith put her rifle, Sibyl, in the spot where she always lived. “I like it just moonlight. Like when we first became lovers. You sound awake,” Smith hinted.

Gillian flowed out from the light covers into Smith’s arms. They were almost the same height, but Gillian was entirely nude, long hair loose, flowing generously to the small of her back.

Another brush of Smith’s lips let her taste something else: salt. Instantly, she tensed. The price of loving was what _protection_ meant, in the Wasteland. “You’ve been crying. Someone else die at work today?”

Smith felt Gillian’s exhale as she shook her head. “Sometimes it can be a good thing that takes me that way. Cheedo came to see me today. Planning to declare herself to the Dag, like you did with me.”

Smith beamed into the shadows. “They’re in love? That is the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard. They are going to be the cutest couple since Fury and Val were sneaking around.”

Her fighting leathers today exposed a slight triangle of skin, at the base of her neck, between her collarbones. Gillian rested a hand there. “The poor girl’s worried. Because of the Vault, because of how they’re trying to live here, because everyone will be watching them. So worried about doing it right. I told her about us.”

Smith swallowed, thinking of the old scandal. “You didn’t.”

“The part about us being…rather out of bounds at the time,” said Gillian, dryly.

“Aw, one good fight with K.T. and we worked it out.” Smith smiled in reminiscence. “That and a few nights with three in the tent.”

Gillian’s sadness took her again, shrank her shoulders. “I didn’t tell her that part. All I could say was not to worry about it being perfect. Perfectly good, perfectly not-wrong. That she was brave to try.” She collapsed against Smith’s shoulder. “This place. What it’s done to them, taken from them.”

The two of them took turns being wracked by the Citadel. Tonight was Gillian’s turn. She knew the Citadel’s secrets, helping run the Infirmary with Melita. Those secrets were a heavy weight. Women’s histories of body-breaking servitude, breeding gone bad; men picked out to be cannon fodder and war blood; only the most fierce unmarked by some abuse. There were the vile records left by the Organic Mechanic, and the ledgers of his more human predecessor, numbed and heedless from the Fall. Death upon death, all weighed by a harsh, commodifying metric. One that they tried to avoid: one that they faced every day. 

Smith crushed her wife in her strong, sinewy arms. “I know you help them here. They trust you. How could they not? You’re beautiful. You’re peace and love. Let me love you.” She stroked Gillian’s back, doing her utmost to bury memory in sensation, for both of them.

Gillian bowed her head to Smith’s shoulder. “I haven’t got much to give, tonight.”

Smith clicked her tongue. “I said _I_ wanted to love _you_. Don’t worry about me.” Against Smith’s layers of leather, Gillian was the pure shape of a woman. A desert vision, sand and silver, dune curves and dark mystery. Time didn’t exist: this was the woman Smith had fallen in love with. Smith pulled her in and kissed both Gillian and all her lost adventures.

Gillian’s mouth, lower lip temptingly full, parted for that firm, lingering kiss.  After a moment, she pulled back. “You smell like…”

Smith kept her mouth on Gillian’s cheek to trace up and nuzzle her ear. “Like what?” She nipped the tender lobe, lapped the small ear’s whorls once, hungrily.

Gillian gasped at the sensuous tickle. She felt her wife’s skin spring into goosebumps. Gillian collected herself enough to whisper, “Gunpowder.” She laughed, slightly. “You. Bad as ever. Still the seducer…” Gillian’s thighs spread, hips sliding against Smith’s leathers. Smith felt her own crotch go liquid as Gillian’s graceful arms slid beneath Smith’s hood, pushing it back. They swayed standing as Gillian taunted Smith, lips to lips. Her tender mouth parted, probed, fluttered, consumed Smith irresistibly, all while Gillian subtly backed towards the bed, Smith happily chained by her loose embrace.

When Gillian curled back expectantly against the sheets, Smith undressed two-thirds of the way. She felt naked with her boots off. Even in the Citadel’s secure heart, lovemaking still meant keeping a shirt on and a weapon near. Sibyl was where she needed to be, perfectly primed, quick to hand. And she loved the feel of Gillian’s hands stealing beneath her shirt, the contrast between her lean planes and Gillian’s curves, those gentle hips and the breasts that had once been the second softest, sweetest skin in the Wasteland.

Gillian’s eyes were dark and narrow, half-closed in temptation. She was biting her lower lip. Smith could see that she expected to be straddled, borne down roughly. But when affairs got hand-to-hand, Smith liked to disrupt, in bed or out of it. She flung herself beside Gillian, scooped her into one arm, and rolled them both to kneeling. Gillian gasped, caught her breath, laughed. Smith was behind her, cupping her body.

Smith wrapped arms around her, pressing Gillian’s bare back against her torso. Their skins together were electric velvet, comfort and arousal. When Gillian relaxed at last, leaning into Smith with her full weight, only then did Smith let her fingertips lace around Gillian’s breasts. She lifted their slight fall, caressing the undersides, cupping them as she teased out the nipples. Gillian moaned louder. It was deliberate, an old lover’s signal: yes, that’s good, keep going.

Smith did, in a way. She slid her right hand slowly back from Gillian’s ribs, plunged her fingers into her own mouth. Being hydrated meant she could slick her own fingers up nicely. She snaked that hand back down to part Gillian’s thighs, seeking the hottest, softest, sweetest spot of her.

She found it.

Gillian arced back into her with a little cry, real surprise. Smith was curved low behind Gillian, her own legs spread wide and hard for her lover’s hips bucking back. With one arm around Gillian’s waist, and a face full of scented hair, she nudged labia open, her fingers’ brief dampness meeting hot moisture. Pure focus took Smith as she stroked down on the trigger-point of her lover’s clit, until Gillian pulled forwards, away. Smith followed her, stopped her with an arm between her legs.

Now they were face to face, Gillian kneeling upright, breath sharp, her body all lines of startled arousal. Smith was on all fours in front of her, and she drew her tongue up Gillian’s arced midriff until her smile hovered over a dark, oval nipple. “Should I?” Smith asked. “Or am I going the wrong way?”

“The right way is _everything_. Oh!” Smith’s mouth came down on her, seizing and lapping the tip of her breast out, hard. Gillian’s knees folded beneath her with a gasp. Smith was delighted. She licked and kissed down Gillian’s waist again, feeling brilliantly alive in the room’s moonshadows. She was a snake, sliding and flickering, a bike, carving her way through the dunes, a predator about to seize the finest fragrant prey. When her mouth landed between Gillian’s legs, they both moaned.

Some words from a past Vuvalini fireside came back to Smith _. What’s the point of being Amazon sharpshooters if we aren’t bloody awesome at this?_ The speaker was dead. She warded off the stab of sadness at that: Gillian would feel it. She owed it to that fireside and their long survival to keep being bloody awesome. Smith buried herself in the citrus-tart taste of her lover, lavishing her fellow survivor with adoration. She licked up and sealed her mouth around the secret seed of her. Gillian started up into her, vibrating silently. Smith kept everything hot, wet, and worked until Gillian reached down and touched her head.

Smith creaked up. “My knees. I always forget it’s not sand in here.” She poured herself on the bed next to Gillian. Languidly, Gillian drew herself up to the battered pillows at one end. Smith pounced beside her. Should she make herself come? Smith decided against it. Gillian would sleep soon, and she’d drift off herself if she calmed down a touch. If she carried an edge and an itchy trigger finger over the next two days, so much the better.

Gillian’s thoughts seemed to have a calmer turn. Softly, she said, “It isn’t this place that takes. It’s the people. There’s no other shelter like this, in our world. If we use it well…it’s the chance to reclaim who we are, what we want.” She clasped Smith’s shoulder. “I needed that. Thank you.”

The bar of moonlight had shifted up the bed. It struck Gillian’s face, cruel as anything from the Wasteland, showing how the years had worn her beauty. The skin around her once-playful eyes was crumpling, narrowing. There was white tracing through the pewter hair. The lines that carved her smile were deeper than ever, but those had always been there.  This was the woman Smith had fallen in love with.

Smith lay closer, encouraging Gillian to nestle against her shoulder. “Those girls will be all right. They’ve got you.” Smith clinched her. “Speaking of other women, wait until you hear what Des is up to.”

Gillian turned in her arms, waking up a touch. “Is she feeling better?”

It took Smith several minutes to reply through her laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to the advance readers for this chapter! 
> 
> 'Verse notes: In my stories, Max's first post-Fury Road venture into the Wasteland was to seek the two Vuvalini who fell off the Rig. And he found them! So Smith and 'Atomic Annie' are at the Citadel, along with Melita and Gillian, for four Vuvalini - five, if you count Furiosa. Smith is the central character of [Aim High, Shoot Low.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5487950)


	13. Shadow and surrender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between two improbable dealmates, affairs may be going _too_ well. Warnings: Explicit het sex with eroticised body horror round 2, boundary pushing, anal sex.

Silence watched Smith watching Koch's rendezvous with the breeder. He and Koch, after the guards’ evening meal, had left the Gastown guards at the same time. Koch had lengthened his stride and ignored Silence to shed him, which was perfect. Now, Silence paused until the Vuvalini guard was distracted by the breeder and Koch. While Smith watched them, Silence slid behind her unseen, into the free Citadel.

Once he hit the deep stairwell that led, eventually, to Rabbit’s room, Silence had time to brood. Rabbit’s story, and her temperance in deferring him, gave him the urge to impress her. He couldn’t repeat himself. That was boring. The guardswoman's presence had reminded him that the whole Wasteland thought they knew what Citadel women liked. But without a tongue, oral sex was exhausting and imprecise. After endless humiliations, he didn’t consider himself well endowed. Nor did he have the endurance of some men, for whom the bed was a Thunderdome they were destined to win. He’d been beneath some of them. The less ferocious or handsome a man was, the more unremarkable he appeared, the more likely he was to ride Silence half the night through his own multiple orgasms.  

Women were more wary and variable. With the willing women who came to the People Eater, Silence had witnessed every extreme. Usually, they smiled, eyes hard with the shine of guzzoline tokens, while they went through the cold, dry motions of service. Or something in the People Eater’s louring, paternal power caught them, made them genuinely wild. When this happened, Silence could look forwards to a few weeks doing little but fetching petroleum-based lubricants, towels, drugs, and medical kits.

Somehow, Rabbit had taken to him like that. Based on last night, she was the female equivalent of those gifted men with nothing to prove, all the body’s pleasure awaiting. It struck him that if he did to her what those men had done to him, that met her deal terms. It was different. And it was another bite of power to claim.

* * *

For Rabbit, it had been a relief to fly to her room and prepare. She hadn’t dared imagine Silence wanting her again. The state of waiting for a lover was delicious and terrifying and amazing and…perhaps that was the wrong word, lover. But what else was there to say? In the Citadel, women teased about boyfriends and husbands, girlfriends and wives, old words resurrected. This wasn’t anywhere near that. Women’s casual partners were crew, screws, schlangers. It felt dreadful to apply any of those to Silence. After his history, she told herself. 

And what was she to him? She’d heard the filth men talked about women. Desperate had let the Gastown guards say terrible things to her face. Silence – she’d never know for sure, with his expression filtered through writing. Perhaps, like the Citadel’s ignorance about the Wasteland, it was for the best. Hastily, she cleaned her door of last night’s blurred notes, dashing it clear with a dry rag. Though it made her nervous, she left the door unlocked. She’d see what he said and did, tonight.

Silence opened her door without knocking. He was already unmasked. Rabbit was caught kneeling by her bed, sorting out the second of two lit kerosene jars. The slim shape of her, latticed behind by her visionary art, caught Silence instantly. Kneeling beside the flame made her all warm highlights and bronze shadows. Her mask was a bar of void below the life of her eyes.

On a whim, he snapped his fingers, beckoning. She dashed halfway to him, then stopped.

They were both jolted. She’d turned, wide-eyed, ready and trembling. He’d lifted his chin, lips parted in anticipation, blood hot at being obeyed.

Rabbit recovered first. She turned his question from yesterday back to him. “What do you want?”  She unfolded her arm, a piece of chalk between her fingers.

Silence seized the chalk with one hand and her wrist with the other, pulling her with him to the door. He turned the key in the lock, then wrote:

_know how to have you_

_inside our deal_

He pulled at Rabbit's mask again. He didn’t wait for her: this time, he went to unclip it. His reach to the nape of her neck, his raised arms, were torturously close to an embrace. The instant her mask fell away, she had to fight the urge to shield her face against his chest. _So easy,_ Rabbit thought, pulse hammering, ashamed to want to give in to him so badly.

Rabbit half-turned her head, eyes lowering demurely over her snarling cleft mouth, revealed for the first time since dawn. Her lashes brushed his withdrawing hand. _So easy,_ Silence thought, hungry, thrilled by this beginning. He remembered one of the first things he’d wondered after learning about her cleft lip, and stripped off his jacket and shirt.

Rabbit watched in amazement as he nipped his own forearm, then held it in front of her face. This was ahead of last night, when he hadn’t wanted to be touched. Maybe. “You want me to bite you?”

Silence smiled and caressed her upper lip again, moved his hand down to tap her sharpest, exposed tooth. Rabbit flinched back, but she said, “Okay.”

Biting his arm seemed too much like an attack. Gently, she leaned in and nibbled the top of his right shoulder. One of his hands clamped the back of her head, hard, turning her mouth into his neck. He didn’t _not_ like it. She copied how he’d first kissed her neck the night before, but avoided his brand. Biting softly up to trace the line of his jaw, she breathed in the base of his hair. “Is that okay?”

He reeled back against the door.

_YES_

_harder + more tongue_

_haven’t got one - you use yours_

Silence sealed his mouth to hers in a deep, open kiss. Warily, Rabbit obeyed, responding with both her lips and tongue. He followed when she withdrew, chasing her mouth: showing off his fearlessness, hungry for what he sensed in her. That she didn’t care how his empty mouth was as wrong as her own.

Rabbit could barely think. When Silence let her go to drag at the knot of her halter and snap his fingers again, she twisted around to undo it. She wasn’t in time to catch him sliding her oversized trousers down over her hips. They tangled around her knees while he pressed his body to her, reaching to stroke her back, all the way down. She stumbled as he hustled her over to the bed.

After that rush, Silence took his time removing his own clothes, showing off further. Rabbit made a small noise as he finished stripping. Tonight, after his idea, he removed his cock harness and sank down gracefully beside her. Her eyes followed the discarded leather and metal. “Does it hurt?” she asked. He smiled, ambivalently, and reached for her.

Rabbit had shaken off her boots and trousers while he posed. She curled her hand to keep from caressing away the strap marks at the base of his half-stiff shaft. It was a relief when his hand plunged between her legs again. There was no hiding how she wanted him. Like before, he worked his hand hard and fast, until he stopped, suddenly. Silence was tapping her thigh. Rabbit remembered to put a hand over her mouth and met his eyes.

Her look of shy astonishment was about right, Silence thought. He slid the back of his hand against her cunt’s complicated folds, then turned and pressed two fingertips against the simpler space further down. Everything was smooth with her own wetness. He worked one finger’s first knuckle up her ass. His cock swelled hard at that alone. Inhaling for control, he tapped her thigh again and lifted his left hand, signing, _OK_?

“Maybe, a little?”

Silence gestured for her attention. He put a hand on his chest, stroked down to his cock, and finished with his hand where he’d started. Rabbit ventured, “You want to take me there.” Inexplicably, Silence pulled a flat tin out of his discarded jacket and held it up. Was it a gift? She had no idea. One thing was certain. This was the most she could do for him without getting bred up. “I’ll try.”

As Silence went to turn her, Rabbit stiffened, clawing down into her cushions. “Not from behind. Please.” If he had any regard for her, he’d agree. Overheard filth ran through her mind again, the way others had talked about making up for her face.

Silence went along with a shrug. The angle would show him off at his best. He grasped Rabbit’s ankles to split her legs, levering his own thigh under her. Then he slid one of the firmer pillows to replace his thigh. He wrapped his left arm around one of her legs, holding it up while he unscrewed his tin of petroleum gel.

The unexpected lift and tilt dizzied Rabbit. Silence’s skin was pale in the lantern light, and the tin he opened shone inside and out. After he dabbed his fingers in, there was a warm chemical smell, and his fingers shone, too. When he snaked those fingers down where she was too shy to look, she half-rolled at the feel of it, shine inside her.

Silence pulled his upper lip back at the petroleum lubricant’s smell, a reminder of a hundred rapes and a thousand dirty, complicit surrenders. With his fingers now tainted, he thumbed a second round out of the tin to slick her up twice. He swiped what remained from that onto himself, giving up tracking where his digits had been. Everything was about to get dirty. Slowly, he bent her knees back, arcing her hips, to force his cock where his fingers had been. He tried twice before locking his body into her fine flesh, light over her bones.

Rabbit clenched her eyes, blinding herself to endure, going tense. Silence gave her that moment. The rest was for him. The position tumbled Rabbit’s slightness around so that her ankles slotted perfectly against his shoulders. He glanced down at what he was doing. With only two lanterns, everything was dim with shadow. He was sliding in and out of her in silhouette, with lubricated gleams of flesh.

To Rabbit, the initial stab of him was a tearing, fiery cramp, until the feeling settled. Then - it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Citadel women whispered that the tailpipe was second best, it would hurt, he had to be reliable, a keeper, to deserve it. Nobody had said that it could feel good. It was deep, blunt, taunting her cunt while she writhed to endure him. The rhythm caught her pulse. She rang with it, as if her skin was the hide on a Citadel drum. The more he thrust, the easier it was to take, his quickening breath contagious. All the tension ignited towards the same joy she’d felt last night. Dark heat took her, and she cried out.

Silence drilled in time with his breath, holding himself to a rhythm. Rabbit was hot and tight, then easing a touch, enough that he knew she liked it. Anger took him, briefly – he could’ve been this good for someone, it’d been stolen from him by that pig bastard. He had to focus on Rabbit’s twisted mouth, remembering her sharp bites. She spasmed, tight enough again to nearly thrust him out, making breathy, intoxicated noises. His anger had numbed him, set him stabbing hard, and he had her again. She was coming, as hard and as easy as when he’d fingered her. It made him come on fast, himself. He was going to get her absolutely filthy. Like him. With him. Now.

Rabbit opened her eyes as he slowed, with a guttural snarl. For an instant, his beautiful face was as distorted as hers. He’d come inside her. He’d liked it enough to make a sound. Last night had been good but this time she’d done it _right_. That would have been worth three times the pain.

Silence stayed inside her until his blood slowed, calmed. It was as good as a second round to take his own time. Before Rabbit could reclaim her legs, on a fond whim, Silence turned to his shoulder and bit one of her curved insteps. She screamed. “That’s my foot! My feet! They’re dirty!” Another bite made her cry out again, folding the leg he hadn’t claimed back to her.

Silence released her other leg before she twisted it and settled beside her, grinning at her delightful reaction. _Her_ feet were dirty? She had no idea. None. Besides, what had they just been doing? He turned, saw her still confused, and went numb again. He’d thought he’d given up on wanting to talk. (He was glad to bore the People Eater away; the Jade knew too much about him already; other people were idiots. So he told himself.) 

Rabbit saw him look away, lips pressed tight, and her spirits sank. With her afflicted mouth and her forever-calloused desert feet, somehow, she'd manged to shame him. Quickly, she asked, “Stay again?”

Silence nodded. He knelt up and burrowed into a jacket pocket. Scrubbing down with a handful of coarse salt and aqua-cola, and one of his rags, took a few minutes. Rabbit echoed his practiced fastidiousness, though she suppressed shock when he tossed a rag into a corner, like a piece of fabric was nothing to him.

After he palmed his hands dry on his shirt, he took the slate again. He knelt at the end of Rabbit’s cushion-pile bed to write:

_this a good room?_

“Oh yes! I adore it! I got it because the door locks – women get rooms like that – and it’s close to the pumps in case of an emergency. It’s always cool. The walls are smooth, so I can draw on them. Nobody bothers me.”

While she rattled, Rabbit watched him examining the end of the concrete slab that held her possessions. She held her breath, wondering what she’d do if he touched them.

_your stuff?_

“Yes?”

_should have more_

“If I had much more, I couldn’t carry it. Then I’d lose it if I had to move fast. What are you doing?” Rabbit watched as he seemed to do what her Citadel pup always did, picking out favourite pillows.

Silence finished arranging some of the larger cushions, that might stay still under him, before he replied.

_need a better bed_

_work you do, should have one_

Rabbit twisted awkwardly. “Maybe? But those beds look boring. Mine, I like the colors. The Citadel gave us things when we came in. We swapped them around until we had what we liked. Is that better?”

Silence flung himself down on top of his flat selection of cushions, then made the OK sign. The concrete was still too close, but it would do. Everything else about the night had been smooth and easy: how Rabbit understood him, the way their bodies locked together. His turnabout of his concubine's skills had gone as he'd planned. He’d been right about her, and she… He shoved other thoughts away, things as impossible as him ever talking again.

Rabbit settled herself in, curling up amongst the smaller pillows and fabric pieces. As before, she angled a shielding pillow corner in front of her mouth. He startled her by leaning over and batting her pillow corner away, to give Rabbit’s mouth a final kiss. Then, he buried his face in the darkest red cushion and closed his eyes.

It was Silence’s turn to sleep while Rabbit stayed awake. She couldn’t imagine sleeping stretched out like he did, all exposed in a strange place. The curves and planes of his naked back and legs were ravishing. The ruined slave brand in the small of his spine drew her artist’s eye, an irresistible centre. If it was chalk or graphite, she would have erased it.

Silence was like Spark in some ways: rearranging the cushions, impulsive, doing things to be watched. She didn't mind watching. But Rabbit wanted to think that she’d still like him even if he was ugly, like her. For all his beauty, her eyes closed when he touched her. Her lost cleft-lipped suitor came back to mind. He hadn’t been much of a talker, either, and his ugliness put her in the shade – his bifurcated lip, tortured teeth, a plug of flesh below his flat nose. But with both him and Silence, she’d felt safe.

It would have been a lie with her suitor, both of them among the Wretched. Life there was unstable, changeable any minute. While she blew out her lanterns, she wondered how much of a lie it was with Silence.

He’d matched her most passionate dreams about him. Any Citadel woman would envy her, she thought, for all that she'd let him have a keeper's share of her body. And he’d given how they were a different name: they had a deal. There was respect in a deal. It felt like the reason she’d been looking for, that he trusted her to deal well. But it also meant, as at the end of their deal before, he’d leave, with a handshake and a smile. She wanted to be all right with that. To be strong about it, like a Citadel woman should be about everything.

Silence sank deeper into sleep. Unconsciously, he edged closer to Rabbit’s warmth. His relaxed exhale brushed the nape of her neck.

And Rabbit knew she wouldn’t be. That, as the price for these hours, she’d bartered her heart away.


	14. Technical difficulties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate deals with the unexpected before breakfast. Notes: Everyone's _talking_ about sex.

Des wasn’t sure what woke her: the dim dawn light, or the sound of her door grinding open. They seemed to come together. Buried reflexes kicked in. She seized the metal shard beneath her pillow. Then she whirled up and around, teeth set, before remembering that she was in the Citadel and wore only the lightest cotton shift.

“Nice,” said Force.

Inside her tiny space, the Gastown guard loomed darkly. Every strap of his gear was in place. Des narrowed her eyes to bluff it out. “Not your turn,” she said.

“Don’t get excited. I’m here to check things out before Brute’s round tonight. Koch said you were tougher than you looked, but you had some little girl’s bed. This palace all yours?"

"Better alone than bad company," Des said.

Force huffed appreciatively. "I hear that." He slid past her and thunked onto her bed, in the warm spot she’d just left. “Mmmm. Pretty tight.”

Des put her hands on her hips. “You’re a big bloke yourself.”

Force turned his masked face up to her, sharply. “Normal with the crew I run with. This’d do for you and I.” He twanged the bedstead with one strong hand. “I’m always a fan of four-point bondage. However. Brute’s two point three meters tall, one-sixty kilos. It’s a problem in all kinds of ways. Starting with, he won’t fit in this.”

Des frowned. “I’m not moving it out. It’s valuable.”

“Won’t be the first time we’ve worked around it. Maybe push it back against your wall with the window, here. Get you on top of it, on your knees, bitch-style.” Force was as far away from her as he could get in the small space. Des still got chills when he surveyed her. “You’re smaller than I thought. You fit right in, here.”

Des evaded this. “I expect Brute’s a big man everywhere.”

Force laughed. “Always was a lucky fella. He’s got the pipes, all right. The rig and the tankers. Anyone’s going to pup you up, he will.”

“Why, planning to watch?”

She'd said it as a throwaway, but Force said, “I’ll be in the room.”

“That’s against our deal. I said one at a time,” said Des, angrily.

“You want me there, trust me. Things get rough, you sing out, I’ll step in.” Force was now testing the spring of the mattress, elbowing it down faster and faster.

“Brute understood what I said. He’ll listen.”

Force released the mattress with a springing squeak. His sharp eye caught her. “Glad you think he’s worth talking to. That’s one up on a lot of breeders here. You ever go with Rictus, in the day?”

“Maybe,” Des lied, coyly.

“First I’ve heard of it. How they treated him, that’s not what I want. You know why Brute's like he is?”

“Something about a fight. An injury.”

“Damn right. He’s always been a man. You treat him like a man.”

His cutting bitterness made Des prickle with warning. “I will.”

Force’s eye met her gaze until she was ready to scream from the tension. Finally, he grunted. Casual again, turned away. “I told you, he’s my mate. Remember that. _Hup_.” The last syllable was Force exhaling as he leapt to touch her ceiling. “At least you’ve got clearance that way. Once I get him in the door, he’s good. And you, sweet meat, are going to be drilled. Take it from me.” Force’s eye narrowed to an amused knife of light.

Force had to pass her to leave. Des stopped him with a taunting touch in the hard centre of his chest, three fingers pressing his leathers. “Since you’ve already found your way, you bring him here. I don’t want to have to cut our guards in for a share if I pass them with the pair of you,” Des lied, again.

"You need extra, say it. I’ll barter you up." Force added, “Brute's no half-life. But the flesh mechanics say, the same thing that makes him a fighting giant, means he’ll die before me. So, whatever makes it good for him. ”

His black glove curled around the wrist of her taunting hand. For an instant, his fingers caged her, hard as a gyve. “Be ready.”

When she dropped her hand, Force left.

Des sat down on her disordered bed. He'd treated her exactly as she'd presented herself, a Citadel milker and breeder, yet that had been all kinds of wrong. The intrusion, the interrogation. The glimmer of Force’s rough care for Brute, with the magnetism of the Wasteland’s rarest virtue, reliability.

The way she’d locked the door before she slept last night.

Des went to breakfast unwontedly early. The corridors felt as darkly claustrophobic as they had when Des had first entered the Citadel.

Rabbit was already hovering at the mess hall entrance, waiting for her, another off-kilter shadow. “You’re all right?”

The clink of Rabbit's tool belt gave Des pause. “I’m fine. You do blackthumb work, right?”

“Sssometimes?” Rabbit’s hand went to her tools.

“How hard is it to open a locked door?”

Rabbit gasped, “I can’t!”

She seemed to deny it because it was a bad thing – not because she was unable to do it. Des stowed this thought for later. For the moment, she said, “I don’t need you to do it. I need to know how difficult it is.”

Making Rabbit think calmed her down. “Ith it a Bethore-time lock or a new one? The old oneth are much harder. If you lotht a key, you’ll be in trou’le.”

“New lock.” Des added, “Thanks. Another good one last night. Sit with me and Smith while I tell her about it.”

Rabbit took a wary step back. “Ssshe knows?”

“Yes, and it’s all good. Come on.” Des strode in. 

Sure enough, Smith waved and shouted happily, “Hey, bad girls! How’d it go?” Smith’s wife, the serene healer Gillian, had tucked herself under Smith’s arm.

After her morning visit, Des couldn’t join Smith fast enough. Rabbit perched, uneasily, at the end of the table’s bench. “Chrome as can be!" As soon as she sat down, this was true. A table full of women, surrounded by people eating, felt like Citadel.

Smith looked at Rabbit. "All right. How'd you set her up?"

"Sssomeone 'routh up their mapth for me to trathe."

Gillian's brows crumpled. "Their what, dear?"

"Their..." Rabbit made a complex, looping gesture over the surface of the table. "Cartograthy?"

Smith smacked the table. "I've got it. An engine, right?" Rabbit shook her head.

"Give her time," Gillian chided, gently.

Des didn't want this to take all day. She was hungry. "Close. She talked to a blackthumb, or someone like that." Rabbit nodded. "I got the story on that Bullet Farmer. By the way, it's true what they say about them."

"Is it?" Smith said.

Des leaned in. “Absolutely. Didn’t take off until he’d formally introduced me to his gun.”

“I’ve seen her shoot. This is a terrible idea,” Smith told the table.

Des let her wickedest smile bloom. “What is it you taught us? One man, one bullet?”

“I hope it hit your target,” said Smith, smiling back.

“You’re trying to get pregnant…do you hope he’ll be the father?” Gillian mused.

 _He didn’t need to abuse women to get decent sons._ “Definitely. Pity he’s gone over to Gastown.” She glanced at Smith.  _Those who fought together were all the family we needed._   “It sounded random. He got knocked out on the Fury Road, came to a couple of days later in Gastown. His brother got killed. So, he never went back, just stayed there.”

Gillian sighed. “That’s a shame.”

"It's a story that makes us say it's a shame. Is it true?" said Smith.

"There's no better time to catch a man lying than during a screw. It was true." Des peered at Smith. “You sure you never had a pup, Smith? I swear I saw a resemblance.”

"Ouch!"

“Tell us about your first one,” said Gillian. “Smith said there was another?”

Des expanded. “A full life and a half, real solid, toasted skin. Tons of hair. I won’t be sorry if he’s bred my next pup because that hair will be adorable. Not the sharpest tool in the repair bay. But he liked everything I had. So much so, I had a hard time getting him to take care of business.” Smith shook her head, and Des went on. “Even asked me to Wretched marry him at the end of the night.”

Smith was laughing helplessly while Gillian tipped over into healer's outrage. She batted Smith's shoulder. “You're being as bad as when I first knew you. And you, Des, you _must_ be careful! Is that the thing with the…”

“I was. They were both clean.”

Smith tapped Des’ hand. “Which one do you like best? That’s what really matters.”

“Neither. I like schlanger. I don’t care much for what it’s attached to.” Smith stopped laughing very suddenly, looking to Rabbit’s seat. Des turned.

Rabbit wasn’t there. She had slipped away yet again. In her place was one of the three leading Milking Mothers: Tidda.

Tidda inclined her braid-crowned head to the Vuvalini. “You will, I know, forgive my intrusion.” Her voice was clipped and regal, and she had a hard eye for Des. “I need to talk to you.”


	15. day 2,772

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Silence is compelled to share his story. Notes: canon-typical grim genfic with slavery, torture, and rape references. Also, crickets get eaten, warning in case bug eating is a squick for you.

This morning, in Rabbit's room, Silence woke from a dream.

The dream itself was nearly sightless. It started with a blindfold being wrapped around his eyes. The crossbow weighed his hands, bolts in a bag on his belt. If he could cock the string and load the crossbow, blindfolded, he was clever enough, he was strong enough. She’d start to teach him how to shoot. In the space of blindness he’d bent, braced, pulled: succeeded. Though his hand ached, he’d pulled the string taut for firing.

It went wrong when he reached for his belt. The bolts were gone. He’d crouched, still blind, and scanned the ground with his hand. Something was wrong. No, from what he could hear, shouting and gunfire, everything was wrong. Where was she? If he stopped, did he break the test? He caught himself thinking, _not blind, anything but blind_.

Then someone seized the crossbow he held. He pulled back, shaking off the blindfold, and --

Silence jerked awake: not the boy from the dream, but a man, still soaked in the sweat of horror from what he’d seen. Somehow, several fabric pieces were draped over him, heating him up.

He looked to his left. Rabbit was curled up, asleep yet. Her hands, curled to loose fists, rested in front of her fragile, awful mouth. Her cleft lip’s snarl was almost gentle, compared to the face in his dream: that of the Thrall Rustler known as the Demon, and her famed metal teeth.

The Demon was real. She had sold him to Gastown, in the end. The rest of his dream, he doubted. But maybe the chalk lines of history netting this room trapped what was lost in more ways than one.

With a concubine’s skill, Silence extracted himself from the bed without waking Rabbit. He dressed, masked, and slipped away without his boots on, mind carefully blank. It did not occur to him that leaving her door ajar would be a risk to her. This was Citadel, and she was Citadel.

When Silence ascended further, he was not stopped. Three days made his own mask a passing face at the Citadel. He came to the high studio, Corpus’ office, well before Rabbit. He’d wanted to have a good pry there without her present. Now that he had it, he felt strangely flat. He unmasked to look around more clearly.

The rooms were open for the passage of Corpus’ chair, uncluttered compared to the People Eater’s hoard-packed spaces. Silence went through the drinks stand - aqua-cola was the least of it - and realized his shine flask was still full. He hadn’t touched his stash once, this trip. Going through shelves and drawers, he was tempted to pocket a few items. But Rabbit might take the blame for them going missing. You didn’t do that to someone you dealt with repeatedly.

A handsome old abacus, brass and black beads, wanted to cling to his hand. Might that be his Citadel thing? His immediate dealings had distracted him from the debt waiting to be claimed from the History Man. The abacus was nothing but pleasant: not enough value to it. He eyed the more complex scientific instruments with frustration, any one of them his after a word, priceless but useless to him. He weighed what they could do for him bartered to Gastown's Refinery.

Not enough.

It came to him, what it was about these rooms. Everything was here for a clean dual purpose, knowledge and power. It wouldn’t be so easy to pry one of the treasures here away. The knowing brought Silence closer to what he wanted: a resource, a weapon, some ineffable tool to back him up as he climbed Gastown. He thought about his morning dream, and wondered about the Citadel’s armory.

Rabbit’s clumping boots gave him ample warning of her arrival. Silence was sitting beside her  seat when she came in, maps spread waiting for her. Her lisp was heavy, this morning. “I saw Death. She’th happy with the deal.”

Silence gave her a thumbs up. Mangler and Koch had both been pumped about the woman. He hoped she survived Brute tonight.

Rabbit had shadows under her eyes today, making them even larger, more haunting. She sat at the desk with delicate care. When Silence gave her a louche smile at that, she turned away. Something was making her shy. For a superstitious moment, Silence wondered if she had tasted his dream, its fear and failure.

She found some composure contemplating the day’s map. When she spoke again, her lisp was light enough to ignore. “If I can do today what I did yesterday I can go see the drilling. That means you can, too.”

Silence gave one finger an ironic spin in the air. Rabbit, already laying out tracing paper, missed this.

She murmured, “Can I ask you a question?” By now, she knew him well enough to look directly at him, to see his gestured reply.

Silence nodded.

“I was thinking…you were the slave to the People Eater like the Sisters were slaves to the Immortan.”

He stayed still.

“Does that mean you help run Gastown? Like the Sisters run the Citadel?”

Silence inhaled and leapt up to the slate.

_NOT YET_

_GOING TO_

“Are there others like you?”

_not alive_

_it was different for me_

“Can you tell me?”

He understood. After her own tales, Rabbit was asking for his story. 

The waiting blackboard was enormous, one of the strangely austere Citadel luxuries, and it wasn’t enough. His years of slavery had been fear and filth, boredom and terrified knowing, united by the cruel, cultivated, endless voice of the People Eater. His head swam. If he didn’t tell Rabbit something, in her wary mood, she might withdraw further. After spending an hour uncertain what he wanted, he knew, sharply, he didn't want that.

Silence decided to start as she had, at the beginning. That, at least, was clean. He picked up the chalk.

_first memory is crossing the salt_

_had a name, people_

_we were the convoy – get you where you needed to go_

_we were saffas_

"What's a saffa?"

_survivors, tough_

_always moving_

_my people = convoy gunners_

_one remembered settled life, taught us letters (important)_

_a run went bad: we were down_

_dead, looted, some to Thrall Rustlers_

_the Thrall Rustlers, they break you_

_take your name away_

_after time in their pits_

_lucky to remember anything before that_

_they sold me to the People Eater_

_as you said 12-13_

_i hated him_

_HATED HIM_

_huge relentless stank of his own death_

_will never say what I did for him_

_don't ask_

_EVER_

_but he had the knowing_

_the Jade there too – his concubine_

_until she argued with him about me_

_after that_

_my tongue was cut out_

_she was put to Scabrous’ torture, took the veil_

_for this, we hated each other_

_things don't get used all the time_

_often: bored_

_Jade saw me understand letters_

_dealt with me: made it easier when I passed on knowing_

_what I heard at his feet_

_Jade told me more so I’d know important parts_

_he got bored too - handed me around_

_stopped hating the Jade: others far worse_

_worst = ones I didn’t hate_

_like the wasteland alone, any hope a mistake_

_this was oldyears_

_before he died, he…got interested again_

_Jade said I was his proxy  
_

“What’s that?”

_substitute? things done to me, instead of him_

_he'd watch_

_he’d talk, at night, plans and ideas_

_told me how I’d die_

“He told your fortune?"

_no, how he’d kill me_

_but he died first_

_thanks fury road war!_

_Jade got me as property, inheritance_

_freed me to citizen brand & indenture _

_said she’d see what I’d do_

_sets me as bait: as poison: as eyes and ears_

_five kills for her_

_when not for her, exploring gtown_

_bartering up_

_watching who else survives_

_i pipewalk, see it all_

_we’re the peak, most tech, most barter – all come to us_

_everyone has the smarts, deals, fights_

_nothing is given_

_today: 2,772 days indenture left_

_either I reach day zero or_

_the Jade will die_

_then_

_what gastown owes me, i will collect_

Silence had erased and refilled the board several times. He looked over his shoulder. Rabbit breathed, "That's awful. You lost your people, then...I'm so sorry." Her graphite stick lay neglected on the desk. She covered her mouth with her hand, despite her half-mask.

Telling it through brought home that his slavery had been shaped by those who were warped, masked, hidden. Steel-toothed Mal of the Thrall Rustlers. The People Eater, sinking into corruption from the rotting centre of his face, lashing out to mutilate others. The Jade, veiling her ruin up to the eyes, setting him free and binding him to her in the same hour. They had all unmade him and made him again. Now, there was Rabbit and the mask he had given her, made her remove. Levels of meaning slid into place, like abacus beads clicking out their sum.

Silence turned to face Rabbit fully. All the dark powers of his life had agreed that sophisticates had their tastes. Fuel for their drive to power. If your tastes made others fear you…so much the better.

Rabbit had continued to scan the board as he thought. Sounding awed, she said, “You killed five people?”

Silence lifted two fingers and drew a third finger like a blade across his throat. She didn’t need to know that he’d been ostensibly servicing those ones at the time. He lifted three more fingers and mimed drinking something, then contorted his face and staggered. Rabbit said, “The ones you poisoned?”

He reached into a pocket and took out a crumpled half-bag of Gastown crickets, offering them with a flourish and his edgiest smile.

Rabbit didn’t get this joke. She half-stood, reaching out before she caught herself. “Can I really?”

Silence shrugged. He had to nod and sign OK for her to truly take in that his answer was yes. With a wary glance at the doorway, Rabbit said, “Let’s go over here, away from the maps.” She went to the drinks stand, which put her back to the door. Only then did her mask come off. Silence felt, again, shock and satisfaction at the undoing and her lowered guard.

Shyly, Rabbit dipped her hand in the bag. She slipped a few crickets into her mouth and paused to savour them. “I heard about these. They are good,” she said, then took a mouthful more.

Silence caught a few between his own fingers, and held them at the level of her snarling lips. Close enough for her to lean over and take them with her mouth. If she dared.

He lifted his hand closer. After an upwards glance, she took them: he felt the warm flicker of her tongue. For an instant, his fingertips rested there, pressed between her whole lip and her cleft one. Her breath was light, palpably warm.

Rabbit swallowed, pulled back with a delicate cough. Still coughing around a wayward cricket flake, she seized a tumbler and splashed water into it, unsteadily. “Let’s have some. Then I’ve _got_ to work.”

He gave a nod and accepted aqua-cola, which he took to the bench, not the chair beside Rabbit. She gulped her water, replaced the mask, and sat back down at the tracing desk, visibly rattled. Good. 

Silence went to the shelf and took the abacus. Shifting the beads around helped you think, and he still had to pin down a last Citadel thing. Rabbit peered up at the slight sound of the beads. “Are you working, too?”

His first thought was,  _not yet_. That reminded of something. Force had laid down an order for him, last night.

_night shift guarding tonight_

“You mean you aren’t free.”

_no, I’m not_

Rabbit glanced over the rest of the board. “I understand…”

Silence caught sight of his last words there, the promise that he would collect. The how of this, the way of it, still eluded him. Witnessing Rabbit’s achievements, being witnessed by her in turn, made it more urgent. He erased everything, folding the promise back into his mind.

Then, he turned back to Rabbit. Every moment he was about to be bored around her, something riveting happened. He sat back down to see what she might ask next. But she was being diligent, head down, drawing with passionate intensity. She didn't even lift her eyes when he began to click the abacus beads again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _we were saffas_ = Down Under and in the UK, 'saffa' is slang for South African migrants. If some Russian migrants are sticking together to create the group known as Buzzards, I headcanon that other migrant groups would, too, in their own ways.
> 
> A related story in my 'verse with a glimpse of the Convoy, and a character who'd remember a settlement: [She was the Warrior Woman.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7438701)


	16. Wrong side business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both Des and Rabbit find themselves on the wrong side of the Citadel. Notes: Genfic chapter.

Tidda had refused to have her talk with Des in the mess hall. After an awkward, silent meal, they were now ascending the Citadel together.

On the stairs to the garden levels, Des eyed Tidda’s graceful sway enviously. The two of them were close in age. Tidda had been one of the Wives of the Immortan before becoming a Milking Mother. She was the kind of beauty the Wasteland admired, dark and curvaceously heavy, crowned with the unique Milking Mother braids. More, Tidda had overlapped in the Vault with the sainted Angharad and the History Woman. A little History Woman went a long way, both among the Milking Mothers and in the new Citadel. (Des cursed herself for not paying more attention to the old woman during their brief Wretched overlap.) Today, Tidda was a staunch ally of the Sisters, an influential member of the Council, and an all-around busybody.

Des stalked along, taut with tension. Finally, she said to Tidda’s backside, “Whatever it is, just tell me.”

Tidda looked over her shoulder. Her voice remained clipped. “Much as I dislike it, this is nothing to do with your wrong-side business."

"It's my business, not yours."

"I disagree. Your wildness impacts how all of the Mothers are seen."

Des flung back her hair, feeling her color rise. Anger suited her, and she hadn't forgotten where this conversation had began. "The Vuvalini are the Many Mothers and they're less tame than you are."

"They claim you choose your wildness. If your choice is worth anything, then make it useful with your help. I need you to talk to someone. My sister.”

Des blinked. “Lolly?”

“We call her Allira now, her name before we were stolen from our people.”

Des remembered people like them, encountered on lucky Wasteland days. Des had been taught to call them _traditional people_. She asked, “Where were you stolen from? Are you going back?”

Tidda’s glance cut. “I wish it was so simple. I cannot in good conscience subject my sister to the need of the country at this time. She cannot heal until she is healed herself. Therefore, I need you to talk to her.”

Des grew even warier. The traditional people said that there was _no such thing_ as the Wasteland. How could they say that, when they stood on the same dead sand and breathed the same irradiated air as everybody else? But normal Wastelanders, like Des and the raiders, knew that if you asked them too many questions, they’d claim “long-time business” and shut down whatever deal you were trying to do. Because you were usually dealing with them for food that kept you healthy as well as alive, you learned not to ask.

Des dodged to the part she understood. “I don’t heal anybody.”

“No, you don’t. You boast about your nights, of letting no man claim you. Hard and exploitative! We were treated as breeders, but turning it about does not right the wrong of it.” Before Des could protest, Tidda said, “Still. You are what my sister needs right now. She is distressed about a man.”

“That bloke they said won her at the Gastown Race? The moony mechanic one who's in with our blackthumbs now?” Des blew air between her lips. “He’s got aqua-cola in his veins instead of blood. He’ll do whatever she says.”

Tidda almost sang with relief. “ _Thank you!_ That is what I need you to say. Tell her that she can break it off for good. After her time in Gastown, my sister is having a difficult time believing she has no need to be with a man for safety – from other men, or from him. Because I am with Jindi, nothing I say makes any difference.” Des frowned. Tidda’s extended multi-lingual courtship with Jindi, a feral recruit like Battler, had set a new standard of Citadel propriety.

“Not even that you’re with Jindi because he’s – “ Des stopped herself from saying _a blackfella too_ just in time. “Your tribe?”

Tidda couldn't resist saying, “We are of parallel moieties. My good fortune does not console her.  She cannot take in what the Vuvalini or the Sisters say, either.” Tidda kept her back to Des as they ascended a stair. She said, wearily, “I saw your kind before I came here. They would come, take, leave…in my sister’s mind, she is to be taken. Show her how you leave.”

“Harden her up.” Des felt advantage waiting for her. “All right.”

They had passed through the start of the gardens to come to the old Milking Mothers’ area. Another feral recruit was guarding its entry. Des was irritated again. This man, two meters of scale-tattooed muscle and fang-filed teeth, was very much to Des’ taste. But he had turned her down for some rusty reason, the Goanna Spirit saying she was not his destined mate. Des had brushed this off as more Wasteland madness. If you tried to keep up with everyone's craziness out there, you'd go crazy yourself. He didn’t look twice at her as he let them in.

The space was quiet, though filled with people. Older former Wretched, shaky former breeders, and lamed Treadmill Rats sat double in the chairs and lined new stone benches. They were at the gentle, constant task of salvaging fabric, unravelling and recreating. Fibers and smallclothes for the entire Citadel came from their twisted hands. One of the Wretched artisans from the Immortan’s day tottered amongst them, chattering and helping. Des knew her name, Sasha, but avoided her eye. After a few mutually frustrating sessions, Des had abandoned Sasha’s fiber tutoring.

Amongst the broken, weatherbeaten bodies here, Allira was twice as striking. Unlike Tidda, Allira was tall and slender, her features fine-cut save for a lush mouth. Des wondered if she and Tidda were truly related, or were friends-made-kin like the Sisters. Both women had been Wives of the Immortan. Cast out the same day as Tidda, still named Lolly, she had met a rougher fate. She hadn't been sent to the Wretched, though that might have been better. Allira had been handed around the lower Citadel as a concubine until she’d been lost in a dice game to a Gastown driver.

Des had no idea what had happened after that, only that Allira had surfaced sixty days past as a prize at the Gastown Race. Furiosa herself had peeled out of the Citadel to try and win her back. She hadn’t won the race, but she’d won Allira’s return, offering the winner Citadel sanctuary for the former Wife’s freedom. Des was envious of this privileged creature, someone’s sister, always desired, someone who’d mattered to the Citadel – until Allira lifted her eyes.

Harrowed eyes that had seen a wrong side.

Des thought of Mangler’s taunt _._ _I would’ve been your worst nightmare. Polecat raider_. She’d laughed. But it was true for Allira. The fiery men Des toyed with now had burned this other woman’s soul to a cinder.

In the Wasteland, someone like this was a liability. Either you profited from them, ruthlessly, or walked away. Des had honed her own anger and hardness to never, never be such walking dead weight.

Meanwhile, Tidda was rambling on to her sister about Des. Allira’s eyes had widened more, her tawny fingers tightening on a snarled mess of fiber. Des couldn’t decide if she was knitting or unravelling.

She might be the only woman in the Citadel worse at this work than Des.

Des reached over and took the snarl out of Allira’s hands, tossing it to one side. “Schlanger’s something, huh? I don’t much care for what it’s attached to.”

Allira’s outraged look showed that she really was prim Tidda’s sister. Des was encouraged. With one eye on Tidda, she nudged Allira over so she could sit down. "What's the story?"

* * *

That evening, Rabbit had managed to get the last of dinner. Latecomers, this night, got thin bean soup and chunks of soggy roast vegetables. She might as well have been eating clay after the day she’d had, with shock upon shock. It didn't matter. It was food. Besides, nothing would ever taste as good as those three mouthfuls of crickets.

She couldn’t believe that she’d finished the job. Mercifully, Silence had fallen into another long daytime sleep soon after his Tell. He’d claimed to be standing guard over the Worksman that night. Rabbit had flung herself into the maps to avoid thinking about Silence’s story.

Silence had once had people of his own, links to the knowing Before-time, a way to be outside the Triumvirate – all things the History Man praised as guideposts to one’s better self. He had what she’d yearned for in dark, low Wretched moments, too: looks, health, the strength to kill five times. Des would have smiled at him if she’d known that.

His story was strange and terrible, yet it all rang true. And if it was true, then Silence had lied to her when they first met. He had claimed he’d lost his voice in battle. Today, he’d told that his tongue had been cut out when he was a slave.

That first meeting was long enough ago that he might have forgotten. With her face, Rabbit knew it was hard to keep track of what you hid and revealed, and to who. Was he lying tonight? Was he really on guard? Or had he come to his senses and decided to shed her?

There was a way to find out. Rabbit slipped back to her room after dinner. She reduced her tool belt to its minimum: keys and pass, and the bundle of temporary caulk in its pouch, reason for anyone on the Pumps team to go anywhere. She wrapped cotton strips to cushion the palms of her hands. Prepared, she went to one of the Pumps’ teams’ secret doors. In the War Tower, the pipes were in plain narrow tunnels. The Green Tower, former home of the Immortan, had a ventilation system, too, and far more pipes, all concealed.

It was a second Citadel, hidden behind the main corridors. Many of its passages were narrow enough that Corpus had trained a panoply of War Pups to traverse them and do small repairs. As the pups outgrew the spaces, new ones were trained. Rabbit was slight enough to get through.

Inside the dark, narrow back tunnels, Rabbit climbed. She turned. The most luxurious quarters, the rooms of the former Immortan and the ones that still held Corpus and the high-ranking visitors, had the most ventilation, and the easiest access through this.

Soon enough, Rabbit was looking out a ventilation grid, at the inside of the Gastown suite. She scanned a dim floor padded with salvaged carpets. Nobody was within sight. There was some muffled snoring. She ducked back and went up a second vent, one that opened on the hallway outside. There was some light from a nearby torch.

And there was Silence.

Rabbit recognized his stride, slinking back and forth at his post. Even the way he walked was more attractive than other men, she thought. Leaning her head down, she could see he was fully masked, restless with boredom again.

She put a hand over her heart. Tension drained out of her. He’d lied before. But he'd told her the truth about this. It mattered far more than she wanted. That was her fault, for falling in love.

She watched as two sets of War Boy boots went past Silence on their own guarding circuit. One said, “’Sup, Gastown.”

Silence lifted a hand.

The other War Boy said, “Give it up. This one’s a snot. Won’t talk to us. Leave him.” After they were gone, Silence curled a fist in the air, giving it an upward twist in their direction. Then, he stalked for a few minutes more. He ended this by sitting with his back against the door, forehead in his hand. It wasn’t very good form, for a guard.

Now Rabbit ached for him. She had stood like that many times, unable to say what she wanted to say with her speech impediments, embarrassed and cut off.

She rattled a key against the ventilation grid. Silence jumped upright, staring around. She waved her white-wrapped palm. “It’th me. I’m down here.”

He came over, leaned down and peered. His face was blocked by the mask: there was no chalk, nor anywhere to write.

“I only came to sssay hi. I know you’re working.”

He made an OK sign, then tapped the grid. He pointed at the door where he’d been. He repeated this twice.

Rabbit struggled for meaning. “Are you athking if the back tunnels acceth the room? They do. I could go look at the Workthman.”

Silence waved his hands in a negative way.

“Nobody ith in here. Only me. The Pumps team hath the key but we don’t want to kill him.”

Silence ran a hand over the grid between them, then stood. After a moment, she realized that he was guarding once more, but beside her grid, across from the door. Reaching through the grid, with one hand’s fingers, she was able to stroke the side of his right boot. He turned his foot subtly so she could grip more of it, her fingers wrapping around to the laces.

She let her hand rest there, for a time. It was good simply being there, sharing some moments of breath and quiet. It had the meditative quality of a better Wretched day, the times she’d curled up in some rocky shade to think peacefully.

Rabbit wanted to talk more, but she felt the risk in it. The last thing she wanted to do was to get him in trouble. She tapped with the key to draw Silence back down. “I’ll go. Sssee you at the drilling tomorrow.”

He reached down with the OK sign again.

Noise carried in the back tunnels, more clearly than in the hallways, sometimes. Rabbit paused. “Sssomeone’th coming,” she said. Silence flung himself across the hallway.  Rabbit heard a door open and some men bantering crudely. The door closed.

Next, a pair of giant rawhide boots passed before Rabbit, and a pair polished to shine like black chrome. A voice she remembered cut the night.

“Looking good, Si. Almost like a guard. Don’t worry your pretty head too much. Citadel won’t take our fellas out tonight, not when the job’s tomorrow.” Rabbit tilted her head to peer up the leathered tower of the most frightening guard, Force. He was blocking her view. She couldn’t see any of Silence’s signs. Force was replying, though. “We’ve got our entertainment lined up. Timing’s good to take Brute’s edge off.”

As she watched, Force unsheathed a knife on his left hip, whetted it against the hard leather encasing his thigh. Rabbit went cold with horror. She was safe, behind the grid – but Silence was right there with him. Before Rabbit could muster a scream, he slid the shining knife away. She gasped with relief.

Unlike Silence, Force was an excellent guard. At her slight sound, his boots shifted, turned. Rabbit slid away from the grid’s light, then froze in the tunnel with her eyes closed. She waited until the last banter and bootsteps were gone before moving further. A last tilted peek at Silence showed he was standing there, watching where Force had gone. He had curled a hand into a fist again, but he didn't raise it.

It was dark on the way down, good for thinking. Perhaps, she thought, Silence had lost his voice in battle, after all, fighting to survive people like that in Gastown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Verse notes: Tidda and Lolly are both in Miss Giddy's tale of the Vault, [Weave a Circle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4229832) chapters 3, 4, and 5. Lolly/Allira is extracted from Gastown in [Fear and Loathing in Gastown.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6654655)


	17. A Citadel breeder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Des channels the ideal of a Citadel breeder for a damaged, appreciative man and a disturbing voyeur. Notes: Explicit het sex. So very, very explicit. Size difference, breeding fetish, voyeurism.

At dusk, Des hovered in the Milking Mothers’ baths, slowly trimming her fingernails. She was waiting for another woman to leave. When the last light faded outside, she was due to take on the biggest man she’d ever had: muscle-bound, mind-blunted Brute. And if he wasn’t satisfied, there’d be a reckoning with Force. Des took care to hum gently, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

The moment she was alone, Des went to the shelf of medicines and creams. Did she dare to take one away with her? From what Force had said, the more greased up she could be, the better. But the Citadel cosmetics were more than valuable, made of oils spared from hungry mouths. They were borderline sacred, composed by the Dag with her own hands, infused with herbs she'd grown. After her confrontations with Smith and Tidda, the last thing Des wanted was to be called out as a thief.

Des exhaled in frustration. Her past several days had been nothing but Wretched shadows. One of the easiest ways to insult a Wretch was to call them a thief. Wretched were also filthy, disease-ridden, cannibal savages who’d traitor you for a potato. It had all been absolutely true of her, when she’d been Wretched. Des compromised. She helped herself to the oiliest of the jars, reaching under her wraps and between her legs, laving her crotch. Whatever she could take on her body, she could claim fair as hers. Reassured by her workaround, she caressed the last of the stuff into her hands. Then, she went back to her room.

She wasn’t the first to arrive there. Blocking her door, a shadow and a tower waited for her in the hallway's dimness. The tower arced his shoulders to stand even taller. A deep voice mumbled. “The breeder.”

“Shhhh,” Des said.

Brute’s quickening breath drew her close. Either she was used to the clinging Gastown atmosphere around these men, or Brute was fresher than the others. Someone was looking after him. Like herself at her best, this near-giant was valuable. The Wasteland's warlords coveted huge men like Brute, walking shields and weapons. Even short on smarts, if he could lift a fist on command, he'd be guided and cared for - long after someone weaker was left to die.

Des had to crane her neck to peer at his face, his strong jaw being worked from side to side. The scant light caught glints of silver in the close-cropped pelt covering his large, squarish head, the hair along his bared forearms. His small eyes opened, a softer blue than Force’s sole gimlet iris. He reached one of his vast hands towards her. Des found herself raising her own hand. Brute folded hers into his digits, turning up his palm to stare at her fingers, small as a girl's hand against his. “Pretty.”

Des had been many things, but never a Citadel breeder. Wretched women had murmured about that ambiguous state, earned by being Citadel bed fodder. They had judged it better than being a Treadmill rat, not as good as a Milking Mother, fed and sheltered, far above Wretched. The moment the Sisters took over the Citadel, the breeders’ brothel closed its doors. Now Citadel breeders were Wasteland legend, more desirable as lost visions than they had ever been as sad-eyed people. How easy it would be, tonight, to make the story true.

Especially for someone who wanted to believe. Brute repeated, “A breeder.”

Des slipped her hand free to unlock her door. She flicked the switch inside, letting light from the room frame her curves. “I sure am. If you breed me, I’ll have another baby.”

“You got baby?” Brute crowded the doorway to look inside, as if expecting a child to toddle out from behind her. He pointed at her windowsill. “Baby?”

Des stepped in, with a strange pang. He was pointing to a pinkish clay skull pot: the face of it had caught his eye more than the plant it contained. “No. That’s a plant. Some green.”

Force said, “Wasn’t in here when I visited you this morning.”

Des snapped, “You said to make it good. Plants are good.”

Force went _hmph_. Des fluttered her lashes at Brute. “I don’t have a baby. Want to help me get one?”

Brute’s brow crumpled. From the darkness, Force cleared his throat. “Keep it simple,” he said, with a warning note. He raised his voice. “You can go with this breeder, mate. Like you go with me. You want her?”

“Uh-huh!”

From the darkness of the hallway, Force reached up to Brute’s neck. There was a click of metal: Brute’s collar fell away. Force caught it, then smacked Brute’s shoulder. “Then take her!”

Released, Brute swayed, uncertain. Des inhaled. It could go any way with the mind-injured: fierce or child-gentle, impotent or hypersexed. Before Des could exhale, Brute stared beyond her.

He ground his jaw and spoke. “I was…with you…before. Here.” He leaned his right hand against the hewn stone wall.

Des said, “Before what?”

“Before the road war. When I…I can’t. I can’t word.” With his free hand, Brute clenched his forehead. Urgently, he repeated, “In here. Right here.”

Des felt a stone drop in her gut. He might be right – not about her, but about a Citadel breeder. In the Immortan’s day, Brute was exactly the sort they would have thrown at a Milking Mother, to breed up a tremendous fighter. Des craned around and peered at Force, gesturing. That schlanger made signs, but she couldn't understand. Finally, he growled, "Don't ask. Do NOT make him remember. He'll suffer for days. Hear me?" Force raised a hand coiled to a black fist.

Des nodded dramatically and gazed back up at Brute. “Shhh. Don’t think. Just…” Des found herself doing what she denied most men: she kissed him. She barely registered his breath. Brute’s mouth was surprised, startled and wet, his teeth small against the spread of his mighty jaw. After she pressed up into him, he got the idea, and seized her at last.

Force decided to shatter this moment. “Undress him.”

Des could do two things at once with a man in her arms. On her tiptoes, she kept her mouth on Brute’s, fluttering her tongue and making little noises while her hands roved. Brute’s gear was the worst of the lot of them, patch and salvage improvised for his  giant’s frame. To pull off his last top layer, she had to break the kiss, and she got a good look at him.

Des gasped. This must be how the repair boys felt lifting the hood on a perfect V8. Brute’s blunt and broken face shadowed a magnificent body. He was broader all about than lost Rictus, wide chest, sturdy middle, arms a natural wonder. Brute lowered his face eagerly for her again, but she raised her hand, saying, “Uh uh, more to go,” and undid the belt holding up his rough-stitched trousers.

To her delight and dismay, his cock matched the rest of him. No wonder Force was staying back, tonight. There was no way he could compare. This virile meat was already half the length of her forearm, thick, veins pulsing dark. Des liked schlanger, but this might be too much of a good thing. She reached for him, mouth dry.

Force’s voice rasped like hers would have, if she could speak. “Both hands, roll the foreskin ‘till…like that. Yeah. Keep going.” He spoke with such bitter, urgent yearning that Des looked up from her two-handed work. Force had slunk inside, closing the door silently, so tense he was swaying on his feet.

With the door shut, her west-facing room held the heat of the day. They made a tense triangle. Des, wraps damp with sweat and oil, worked Brute’s massive meat with her hands, cleavage crushed swelling between her busy arms, hungry and menaced. Brute, his hum catching to a groan, clenching Des’ shoulder, her bones and flesh fragile in his hand. Force’s still menace, his one eye threatening as a light on a midnight Wasteland plain, artificially sharp, unerringly focused. He had to be sweating like a Bartertown hog inside his black leather carapace.

Brute’s cock rose slowly, from the base upwards, from the core outwards. Force said, thickly, “He’s slow to get it up. It’ll stay up for a while.” Des started to go down on her knees, and stopped when she was bent over. Down on her knees would be too low. When she mouthed Brute’s cock head, stretching her lips to their utmost, both men made noise. Des felt her blood sharpen. They both had their guard down. She could run this screw.

Brute wasn’t rock hard in his stiffness. Des’ thighs were sliding against each other, stolen slickness and her cunt’s hunger fused together. She looked up into Brute’s face. The blankness of him fairly glowed. It was time to repeat the trick that had charmed Mangler, pulling away the pin that held her wraps. She was so sticky that she had to shimmy her shoulders for the fabric to fall, setting her breasts bouncing. Des turned around, arcing her backside. She leaned over her bed, placing one knee on the mattress. Reaching between her legs to spread her cunt (and work wayward oil back inside her), she began to purr, “You ready to –“

WHUMP.

Brute had seized her hips and jammed against her, hard on the spot between her cunt and her tailpipe. Des cried out and writhed. Brute kept cramming blindly, his grip on her unbreakable, until stray oil slickened his hand and Des could slide up. Two centimeters made the difference. Des felt the breadth of his cock split her, and hammered the bed, exhaling in great huffs to force herself lax.

Then Brute began to move.

She’d been wrong. She wasn’t running this screw. Nobody was. The road war that had taken Brute’s mind drove his body on yet, all hard instinct. It was like taking on ten men at once, a whole mad mob in one body. The best things that could happen would be walking away in one piece and knowing she was bred up at last. Brute’s pounding hammered her cunt, drilled her entire body. She took the rhythm to rock with him, spreading her legs wider and lower. If she stayed still, her insides would be bruised. Every round of Wasteland whoring, every thought she’d shut down to endure, had led up to this. The past was a horror and the future a terror and the present would tear her apart - unless she rode it as hard as it rode her. Desperate reached down and ground the hot spot between her legs with two fingers, anything to make herself open more, more, more.

Her eyes jerked open when something strange and soft brushed her cheek. Plant tendrils – Brute was screwing her so hard, her head was almost out her window. Suddenly a black bar snapped before her, steel-hard: Force’s arm. Brute’s thrusts sent her further forwards to clutch at it. Force’s tension held her in place. His jealous, blazing eye left her no illusion. He might watch her drop, if there wasn’t a risk to his mate.

And it was while the two of them stared at each other that Brute, with a cry like pain, stopped stock still in his climax. Des closed her eyes at the wild feel of his cock twitching inside her.

Force roughly shoved her back and slid away to Brute. Des heard him murmuring. “You like her? Yeah?” She turned around slowly, legs spread to massage her strained hip joints. The sight of Des, spread and primed, sent Brute reaching for her again. His hand was almost massive enough to circle her thigh. Facing him, Des saw that Force was right: Brute was still hard. He was closing in on her again, knees to the floor, dragging her to the edge of the bed. She glimpsed the blood-flushed head of his schlanger laced with cloud-white jism before the slick heat pressed against her entire labia, back inside her.

Des cursed wildly, until Brute’s torso settled on her as he thrust. Then she had to breathe. Her face was crushed against his hot chest. Before his weighty trunk could pin her helplessly, she lifted her ass off the mattress (were things at more of an angle down there?) to get some space between them. The change in angle ignited something inside her, filling her guts with fire and light. She howled, “Give it to me. Come on. Come on. Fill me up again. Breed me!” In her lustful fury, she bit and mouthed him until he moaned, once, twice, a third time. Her cunt convulsed. Between her legs, where his broken mind didn’t matter, he shot again.

This time, he stayed locked to her. His sweat dripped onto her as he heaved, like the fertile touch of the irrigation systems upstairs. Des stroked the rivulets on his chest, smoothing her bite marks out of his flesh, until he scooped an arm beneath her and pressed her close.

“You liked it,” he said, as wonderingly as he’d named her a breeder, earlier.

She shifted to let his meat slip out at last, shuddering at a warm gush down her thigh. She was trapped open, still spread across Brute's body. “Yes. You were very, very –“ A silver line blurred before her eyes. Force had looped the collar chain back over Brute’s head. Its click was cold as Brute’s arm drew away. Force’s black-gloved hands were digging into his back, distracting him with new, strong touch.

“Very good. She’s a lucky breeder, yes, she is. You liked it too?” They drew away. Des folded an arm against herself, then brought her legs together at last, watching Force weave his net of possession around Brute again. “Let’s get you dressed.” Force spared Des a glance. “Stay there. Cover up.”

Remembering his black fist, Des enveloped herself in her bed covers. Force half-talked Brute through dressing, half-finished it himself. She let one breast peep out and stroked her hair vaguely smooth. Force ignored her spectacularly, talking the other man out the door. The polished abruptness of it all led her to draw the covers tighter around her, and to seek her dagger's hilt hidden in the fabric. Whatever they were up to next, Force had done it before.

Force drew her door closed as he went – to open it again. Airy and relaxed, Force said, “About tomorrow. Don't expect Koch. With these damn riflewomen everywhere, he'll be on duty. Might take it myself, things go well.”

Des shook her head to clear it. “What things?”

“You have no clue why we’re here,” Force said, flatly. “Of course not. Breeder.”

Des drew herself upright, hating his knack of making her feel stupid. “Some Pumps thing. Corpus business. He stays far from us women, now. It’s mutual.”

Force laughed. “Lucky. I’ve been cooped up with him and his mates three days running. He’s enjoying the Gastown toys we brought. Things don’t go well tomorrow…you’ll know.” With a hush that promised violence, Force said, “And I’ll be a very busy man.”

“If it’s all good?”

Force retreated into the hallway’s darkness. “I might...”

Her door creaked shut.

Des dug out her key and staggered up to relock her door. Not that it would do much good, she realized. She wanted a bar for it, now. Her fingers were sticky on the key's metal. Absent-mindedly, she licked her fingertips, then smiled. The big man even tasted good. She remembered what Force had said, promising her to Brute. _Like you go with me._ Des narrowed her eyes at the thought of Force collaring all that protection and potency. She was pretty sure she knew what Force was going to do next. What she would have done, if...

It was one thought too much. Still light-headed, she wound one of her wraps between her legs.  Then, she leaned over onto her canted mattress, flattening her body to match her mind: blank as a ground zero.


	18. this is the drill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s drilling day! Desperate gloats, Silence is unmasked, and Rabbit is on the spot. Notes: Gen chapter.

The next morning, Des opened her eyes. She moved carefully. Every muscle in her body had something to say about the night before. Warily, she slid a hand down between her legs. After that epic pounding, her snatch was closed and tight. Sitting up, she parted her labia with two fingers. The inner flesh was still wet, wet, wet. Her body was clinging to Brute’s juices. She had to be pregnant. She could nearly feel the deceptive happiness of it, the strange feeling that everything was going to be fine.  She flopped back voluptuously.

That had definitely been the most incredible ride of her entire life.

For once, she felt warm affection for a partner. Brute was close to the perfect man: all the muscle, twice the schlanger, none of the disappointing male mind. Most Wasteland men had their heads full of their own obsessions and hungers. All Brute had was the hunger. He was refreshingly empty, restful despite his physical demands. She imagined Brute’s chain in her hand, her being the one to boss him around. Here at the Citadel, there was another mind-damaged man-mountain, parked on the vehicle bay as a guard. Brute, who liked a breeder? Who remembered being here before? He’d be an ideal guard for the Citadel space that sheltered still-healing women.

Des’ displeasure at realizing Force, too, enjoyed Brute’s carnal pleasures had clarified. For a brief moment she wondered seriously how she could take Brute off Force. It wasn’t likely, not on her own. Force was a killer, sharp Wasteland death, honed beyond most men she’d met. She’d never get the drop on him. You had to admire someone like that.

Des got up to get breakfast, since she’d be eating for two any minute. She brightened, convinced that, soon, she’d get the pregnancy diet she’d seen some other women eating. The two castes at the new Citadel to get extra protein were proven fighters and pregnant women. On her way, she drifted along with a smile for everyone. She knew she was glowing, garnering double-takes, radiating sex.

Des encountered Rabbit outside the mess hall, writing on the wall with intense concentration. She trilled, “Good morning! What’s that say?”

Rabbit took a small breath and read aloud. “Water Ssservice Maintenanthee Today. No wather thlow bethween ssssunrithe and sssundown. Uthe your sssaved water! Athk your lethel leader or camp leader if you need more! Pleathe be patient!”

Desperate winced. “Mmmm. What's that at the bottom?”

“It’th not wordth. It’th a pictogram. The sssame metthage in pictureth.” Rabbit’s dark gaze seized her. “You’re ssstill okay?”

Des rolled her eyes. “I’m fine! Never better!”

“If you’re good. Are you going to ssstop now?” Rabbit was holding one piece of chalk in two hands, twisting it nervously.

“One more to go. I’m not even sure if he’s up for it. Gastown, you know?”

Rabbit looked relieved. Des added, “Last night’s was the best yet. Smith’s come around for the rundown. Want to sit with us?”

“I. I’th got…“ Rabbit started a word and changed it. “More to write, in other plathes.” From what little Des could read of Rabbit behind the mask, she wasn’t happy about this.

Des peered into the mess hall. Smith was waiting, with a few other women. “Later, then.”

She sauntered over, smiling brightly once more. Getting in with the Vuvalini was another way to stay ahead at the Citadel. For four women (five, if you counted the Imperator), they were influential. In all her Citadel time she’d never spent as many moments with them as over the past few days. And she’d never turn down anything useful.

* * *

Silence had spent perhaps half a day at the drilling. It felt like an eternity, long enough that Corpus’ pups had passed some food around. He had kept his mask on instead of eating, clustering with the true guards around the Worksman on the platform. The coolness and damp, refreshing at first, were settling into his bones unpleasantly. When was Rabbit going to get here? She’d wanted to be here so much, there had to be something interesting about it.

She’d certainly livened up guard duty last night. First, her showing up at all, when he couldn’t do anything for her. She hadn't asked for anything. Or had she? Her beggar’s touch on his boots had driven him insane. If he’d been able to pass notes, he would have told her what that was doing to him. Asked for more, urged her to meet up at dawn, to finish what she was starting. As it was, she’d left him to his fever.

The Wellhead’s space, carved out of the base of the Green Tower, was dull and dark. The well itself was far more like a capped oil well than the pool of water he’d imagined. Its cap of dark pipe, shifted for the portable drilling rig, was ringed by a metal platform to elevate workers. This was important enough that hoarded electrical lights picked out the drilling rig's controls. A thin metal stair linked the platform to a box of an office clinging to the cave’s wall. Miscellaneous pipes and equipment gurgled and hummed. Everyone was avoiding the Wellhead’s stone floor, a mess of recycled drilling sluice and rubble today, fluid leaking out of improvised sandbag pools.

The platform around the well’s head was packed with the Worksman and one of the drillers. The metal vibrated, and the drilling noise made it almost impossible to hear, but the Worksman insisted on being down there, so the guards were, too. Gastown’s second driller was running the machine. The metal stairs held Corpus at their base, his coterie of War Pups and young men. The History Man was immediately behind him. Further up were three of the Sisters, one or two Mothers, and a mixed handful of Citadel guards, including a single Vuvalini with her rifle.

Koch saw the Vuvalini as his personal challenger, or perhaps something more. He was shifting his weapons around, posing, and making the most of this extended standoff. She was openly yawning. The Imperator had looked in and left twice.

Apart from that, the most interesting thing was, to Silence’s surprise, Corpus. Corpus had placed himself exactly between the Citadel team on the stairs and the Gastown men on the platform. Silence watched him seeing; saw the group of children around him constantly shifting, one always going away, one always coming back. Silence didn’t know if the ruling women averted their eyes from Corpus because he was the last, necessary link to the Immortan, or because of his helpless-seeming deformity. But because they weren’t looking at Corpus, they didn’t see his pipelines.

Force gave Silence a tap and yelled in his ear. “This damn cold. We’ve gotta piss. Step off this platform and cover us.” Silence followed them to the dark, damp floor to be used as a shield. Force was touchy, today, bored and tense enough for malice. Silence didn’t want to be the one to trigger it. When the two men were behind him, he turned his mask-blanked face towards the staircase as if absolutely nothing was going on.

Fortunately, they weren’t the only ones moving. There were changes on the stairs. As the Mothers and Cheedo began to leave, another, slighter figure began to descend. At last, it was Rabbit.

On the stairs, Cheedo greeted Rabbit, seizing one of Rabbit’s hands, ruffling her hair, as if they were both children. With her mask, it was hard to see how Rabbit took this. After a moment, Cheedo gave her an embrace. Probably for warmth: Rabbit’s skin ran warm. Rabbit slid further down the stairs.

Next, she was stopped by the Vuvalini. The taller, older woman bent over to shout in Rabbit’s ear for a moment. Rabbit’s stance showed amusement. The way she leaned in – they were friends, in some way. Silence glared jealous daggers until Rabbit continued down.

The History Man grabbed her elbow and introduced her to the nearby driller. There seemed to be more shouting going on. But Rabbit was looking around…

She saw him at last. On her way down, her path was barred by two of Corpus’ pups. She leaned in to hear Corpus say something. Silence watched in increasing outrage. Corpus didn’t want her to come down? Rabbit’s hands made conciliatory movements. She was allowed to squeeze past, leaping off the platform immediately to avoid the rest of the Gastown crew. Silence only felt right when she came directly to him.

Rabbit said, as loudly as she could manage, “You can’t be down on the floor here!”

Unsure if Force was done with his and Brute’s business, Silence shrugged. He pointed at the platform, and pressed his cold hands together, trying to indicate that it was crowded up there.

This was, perhaps, the first time Rabbit didn’t take his meaning. “I’m sorry, you can’t stay here. Come up!” She used both hands to give his right arm a gentle pull. “I had to say I’d get you where you should be to come down here to you!”

Silence then pointed at her, at himself, and upstairs. He tilted his head.

This time, she understood. “I only arrived now, I can’t go yet,” she said. She seemed to feel the cold all at once, shivering slightly. “Later tonight? Like before?”

Silence gave one sharp nod.

“Who’s your friend, Si?” They both looked up. Force had emerged from the shadows. His one eye roved Rabbit up and down, reading her with Gastown keenness. He added, “Your dark-eyed friend…”

Silence went colder.

“I work with the Pump team.” Rabbit said, carefully. She had dropped the “s,” to avoid lisping to a stranger. She had also let go of his arm.

“Yeah? A worker! Nice,” Force said, elbowing Silence aside. “I can talk to you, right? Citadel won’t mind. This is my mate Brute.” Rabbit stepped back as Brute was drawn forward. “Not much of a talker himself. Maybe you can tell me something. How’s all this work?”

“The aquifer? Or the drilling today?”

“All of it. Whatever you've got. Gastown, they don’t let the knowing out of the refinery,” Force said, a twist of tone turning this into a shared secret.

“I can draw ith for you?” said Rabbit. “Then you’ll sssee both.” She took out some of her eternal chalk and began to sketch on the rough stone wall, the aquifer well in profile. Silence knew Force had read Rabbit’s guileless hands on his arm. Now Force was goading him, doing what Silence couldn’t by talking to Rabbit.

Meanwhile, Brute leaned forwards, watching the white lines appear. Rabbit’s soft voice drew him in. Silence went on high alert. Brute's attention was a dangerous thing. This instant, Rabbit was on Force’s blind side. He was missing this, his one eye turned towards Silence.

So Silence did what Force wouldn’t: he unmasked. He shook out his hair and leaned to catch Rabbit’s eye, trying gestures. A flat hand to stop, fingers slicing across his throat for danger, his hand to his heart, come here, come here, _come here_. It half-worked. Rabbit was gazing at him, but remained engaged with Brute. Giving up, he leaned over to jerk a weapon out of his boot, a rebar nightstick. His hand never made it down. Quick as thought, Force clamped his wrist.

"Not my mate," Force hissed. "If I didn't have a use for this arm of yours, later..." When his threats failed to get Silence's full attention, Force turned at last, and his eye widened.

They were both looking as Brute lurched forwards towards Rabbit, reaching out. She skittered back. Brute let her pass. Instead, his heavy hand fell on her diagram. He grimaced and shook his head, then bashed a fist into the wall beside it. Some stone flaked and crumbled down.

Force was there in an instant. “Hey now. Hey now. I know. Leave it. You can leave it.”

Now Brute and Force were between them, both of them far too close to Rabbit. As Silence went to get to her, one of the work lights swung – to shine right in his eyes.

The drill’s hammering whine cut out abruptly. A flat young voice shouted from the stairs. “Silence? Is that you down there?”

The entire assemblage turned his way.

Seventh-day smeg. He’d been recognized at last, by the sharpest of the Sisters, the Knowing. There was nothing for it but to turn and give her a wave.  He couldn’t see Corpus, from this angle. But History was leaning out with an expression of shock that was, honestly, almost worth being rumbled. Silence waved at him too. The Knowing zipped down the stairs to History. In the quiet moment, Silence could hear them, talking too loudly into each other's stunned ears.

“…what’s he doing here?”

“…you’re asking _me_? First I’ve seen…”

“… if anyone’s the Jade’s, he is…”

“…office boy? For fuck’s sake…”

They sharpened up and lowered their voices. The last words he caught made his mind freeze. 

“… possible solution…”

Solution to what? The drill started up again. Its hammering matched his pulse.

There was fumbling on the drill platform. Koch was jumping to attention – to help the History Man further down. The old man scrambled to the floor and raised his deep healthy voice, “Imagine meeting you here. Who knew we shared an interest in cartography? Enjoying yourself? The Sisters want a word with you.” He gestured back to the well platform, where the Knowing was waiting. The Capable and their Vuvalini riflewoman came down to join her.

Force said, “In a minute, sir, let me just debrief.” He clamped Silence’s arm and dragged him back into shadow.

“What’s this about? First you taint a Joe-damn _worker_ , now this? You in with every quim in the place?”

Silence made every know-nothing gesture he had. When Force released him, the Worksman, of all people, had clambered down, too, and was observing Rabbit’s drawing, pontificating at History and adding his own lines.

Rabbit was hovering in the hard shadow of the Wellhead’s edge. Silence went by her to leave. He turned and tilted his head, a final chance for her to say something, anything. At this third chance, she understood. “Listen to their stories. They like that.” She held out her belt’s small note slate to Silence, two pieces of chalk under her thumb. He grabbed it all and pulled himself up smoothly.

Rabbit stepped between the old men. Silence breathed. In the Worksman’s zone, she was safe. He glanced  at the two unmasked young women, the dark face and the pale, waiting for him. Without looking back again, he ascended.

* * *

The terrible guards went back to their shadows when Silence left. There was no relief in this for Rabbit. It took a while for everyone to get back on the rattling platform again. Rabbit shifted over to where Smith now stood, grateful for her fierce shadow, and looked up. The Sisters and Silence were already gone.

She found herself the focus of the trio of knowing men. This was awful. To her, Force and the Worksman were equals as Gastown strangers, old, powerful and dangerous. The Worksman was talking at her. “Good explanation. One of the Citadel’s scribes?”

Blessedly, Corpus jumped in. “Yes, on our team. No recruiting, now!”

The old man in the blue coverall nodded. “Good cartography. Originals left immaculate.”

“Nice take on the differentiation key, too,” Corpus added.

History coughed. “That ‘office boy’ of yours, I need to ask – ”

Rabbit braced herself, unsure if he was addressing her or the Worksman. But, suddenly, the drill stopped and the drillers whistled together. “We’ve hit the depth. Pulling her back up!”

Everyone watched in a hush as they cranked the drill out of the well. Two Pumps boys - young men, these ones - brought over the test system, hooked up to an old machine called a bicycle. One of them hopped on the seat and pedalled madly to spool its chain and sample water cans down. The men were laughing and joking among themselves, now, even the History Man.  As if they were all boys, and this was some game, when it was life or death for thousands of people.

Rabbit jumped at a touch on her shoulder, but it was only Smith. "What are they doing? Isn't the water hundreds of meters down?"

Rabbit did her best. "If there ith more wather at the depth, it will come up to fill the well higher. It'th a flowing artethian well."

Smith looked dubious. "If you say so." 

By the time the young man was glowing and panting, cans of water on the chain started to emerge. The mustached driller drank. “Tastes like aqua-cola to me!”

He handed water to History.

History held it for Corpus. Waited for his nod. Sipped, then, himself. He then handed the cup to the Worksman. The three of them put their heads together and whispered. Rabbit was clenching her hands together. The stuff they were handing around was silty. Rabbit held her breath. It looked like what had been good enough, once, for the Wretched.

The knowing men all nodded. History cleared his throat and let his voice boom. “We have successfully extended the Citadel’s well.”

The pups screamed and cheered. Smith did, too, smacking the shoulder of the Gastown guard next to her (Koch, not Force) and yelling to Rabbit, "Wait 'till we tell the pups!"

Corpus said, “Right. From my father’s cellar. The last champagne known to man, for a hundred more years of aqua-cola. That’s thirty-six thousand days.” One of the boys handed up an ancient green bottle. After it was opened with a bang, it was held for Corpus to take a swig. Then, he gestured for it to be passed to History.

History made a face, laughing. “Oh God, that’s undrinkable. But try it! Makes the aqua-cola taste better!” He passed it up to the drillers, who laughed and spat, then passed it to the Worksman. Force watched all this intently. Smith had recovered herself enough to watch Force.

As the precious bottle did the rounds, the last two lingering Mothers and Citadel guards coming down too, Rabbit slipped by herself below the Wellhead platform. She'd written messages over half the Green Tower today, explaining to those like Des as she went. It had been a last-minute order from Corpus, backed up by History. After three days talking to Silence, this was less hard than it usually was. Missing Silence while doing that, thinking how short their lives might be if the drilling went wrong, had given her the courage to ask him about tonight.

She'd succeeded, for all of a minute, until that bizarre moment with horrible Force and his strange mate. They said that man was mind-damaged. But Rabbit thought that Brute had almost understood. He'd looked at her simple diagram like he'd remembered something. Just when the Sisters had known Silence, and called him away. To Rabbit, that had seemed fated and fitting.

Unobserved, she touched the stone under her feet. This place was changed like herself: the same from the outside, doing what was expected, but far deeper now. At that moment, it was the sudden expansion of her work, her speaking, the way she was being seen. And before and after, opening herself, body and soul, to Silence.

Rabbit considered his second words to her:

 _from gtown, never nice_.

It could mean that Silence would do as he’d agreed and come to her later. Or that, with the Sisters' notice of him, he’d take advantage of a better deal.

She was going to have to set it aside, for now, and be on the Pumps team. Rabbit dipped her knees and touched the stone a second time, for strength and the soul’s water. This done, she slipped back upwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Verse notes: Toast first met Silence in Chapter 8 of [Gastown Nights.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4515567)
> 
> Thank you again to all the readers along for this OC tire fire!


	19. The best bad option

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Take any of your fears about this and double them and he’s still our best bad option." Notes: Gen chapter.

Silence knew the Sisters by their Gastown names. The Knowing and The Capable were famous faces there. They soon caught up with the third Sister who'd been watching the drilling. Most of Gastown now called this one Chrome, but she had been introduced to Silence as Cheedo. He thought the childish name suited her better. To Silence, after several days of leaning over to hear Rabbit, she seemed tall and loud.

The three Sisters shifted constantly, one of them always engaging him. They moved him among them like the tightest group of guards and a dangerous charge. Someone was always talking to him, such ruthless rapid-fire that he gave up responding with notes and missed their asides to each other.

The Sisters merited rousting a crew to stamp an elevator’s treadmill, or perhaps it was his dubious presence. Silence exchanged glares with their War Boy guard, glued to Capable’s side. The two older women’s eyes were hard, too. The Knowing might have been judging how much he’d go for by the kilo. Silence returned their gaze frankly. They had set their concubine's polish aside, roughly dressed and draped, their once fine-grained skins freckled or tanned. They still held themselves like they were worth three war parties and the deaths of three warlords. It struck him that he might be looking at three new warlords. What they'd endured as Triumverate slaves would fuel that. 

They ascended. The Citadel’s height was near-blinding after the Wellhead. By the time Silence’s eyes had adjusted to light and greenery, either his trip was salvaged or he was dead meat, because the fourth Sister joined them. Matters were afoot if the Dag had emerged. The Dag had no Gastown name. She was such a rare presence that merely seeing her had value. Silence would be rewarded for confirming that she existed and was in good health - if he left the Citadel's height alive. For the Dag had a dangerous air, and the rumors about her were wild. It was said she had returned from the Wasteland with strange powers to become the Citadel's garden goddess, that she had borne the Immortan's last child in secret. After Rabbit's stories, he was closer to believing this. He remembered more of Rabbit's sibilant whispers, too. _Used-up Wretched...the Citadel would throw them out from a hundred and fifty meters._ They were far higher than that.

Silence cracked. He brought their progression to a halt as he wrote on Rabbit's slate:

_why bring me here  
_

The Capable said, cautiously, "We'd like to talk to you. There's not a lot of people our age near Gastown's council. Their Executive Board. We thought you might like to see what we do here, now."

"Besides, if you've been in Corpus' office and the Wellhead, you've seen everything else," the Knowing grumbled.

Silence gave their white-clay guard a look. Resistance was obviously useless. He lapsed into his old slave's passivity and let them usher him around the uppermost level in the Green Tower, the Citadel's most privileged place. There were the children’s spaces, the gardens, a hut amidst the gardens that they said nothing about. He had some interest in the plants, more valuable, he'd heard, than any fighters. When Silence brushed past some silvery greenery growing soft and low, he caught the scent Rabbit’s hair had, their first night together. Cheedo saw him pause. “It’s sage. I make tea with this.” _Their stories_ , Silence thought, and gave his head a curious tilt. She began to natter about making sage tea for the Imperator.

Silence was distracted from her story by not one, but two women's faces he knew. On a stone bench, with a few other women, was the lean Milking Mother he’d last seen selling herself to the Gastown guards. And she was talking to the concubine prize from the Gastown Race, the one the Citadel had gone to such lengths to rescue. Silence got Cheedo’s attention and pointed, tilting his head.

Cheedo smiled brilliantly. “That’s right! She’s here now and she’s happy, and you helped!”

Helped? He’d had a grudge against one of the racers vying for the woman, and an eye to barter up with the Citadel’s absurd wild card, their History Man. That hadn’t gone like he’d planned. In the end, to protect their improbable deal, he’d had to overinvest in the situation. So he’d thought at the time.

The Capable caught his shock. She met his eyes and said, “It was more than most of Gastown did for us. And that’s another reason we want to talk to you.”

The fabled Vault was their last stop. The Sisters went rigid with unpleasant memory. “I saw where you’d been kept,” the Knowing said. “It’s different, but not.” Silence tilted his mouth: it was their first acknowledgement of what they had all been. In this particular place, Silence felt it coiling back around him like Gastown vapors. Like the stink of Gastown itself, it hit harsher after a Citadel reprieve. 

Silence steeled himself for a stalk around, hands behind his back. The Vault was an uncanny mix of raw geology and prime salvage, overlarge for a handful of women. The Vault's survivors narrated the space. Here, in this chamber, was where the History Woman had been: there, the Imperator. They’d tidied the books, they said, painted aphorisms on the walls and made them into Citadel law. WE ARE NOT THINGS. YOU CANNOT OWN A HUMAN BEING. Truth to the History Man, who had claimed these laws to ward off the deal he'd agreed to. And falseness to the Citadel; to get one of their own back from Gastown, they would have been willing to buy. That was what power was, twisting laws to suit you.

A messenger broke the moment with the news that the drilling had found more pure water. The Sisters displayed mild enthusiasm, exchanging glances, and invited him to come celebrate. There was nothing to say but yes. They were all glad to leave the Vault.

Back in the gardens, they perched under a pergola. It was early evening by this time. Their celebration was similar to one of the Jade’s high-strung tea gatherings for negotiating women. The Sisters lit kerosene lanterns – costly metal and glass ones – and offered him tea and fruit. Silence suppressed the urge to pocket the fruit to trade later, and accepted tea.

The Sisters told more stories. The History Woman, the Sisters said, had taught them here once: now they had small group discussions with the History Man about philosophy and the future. Capable said, “The gardens are what we want the Citadel itself to be, a space to grow. For everyone here.” Silence didn’t see how they could expand the plantings more. They spilled from containers, stacked racks, soil contained in stone terraces. He thought of Rabbit's twining drawings, walls of visions in the room she found cool and peaceful. 

The Knowing asked, “How are you finding it here?”

Based on his afternoon, they needed to take their lives here up a level. The people seemed dull, absorbed in simple tasks. The stone halls were raw, featureless. They should let Rabbit draw over every surface in the place to give it Gastown’s civilized complexity. Still, Silence had whored enough to tell when he was supposed to be impressed.

_good. the Wretched like you Sisters_

Cheedo lit up. “That’s so good! I mean, we’re all Citadel now, but we’ve been trying. We go down and they come up and a lot of them come in and…” Silence listened to her with a distinct lack of antagonism. She was the slowest truck in the Sisters' convoy, but she had been genuinely happy to see Rabbit.

The Dag challenged him with her pale eyes. “It’s what we do here. Treating people like people, instead of sides of meat.” That stab set the seal on her as the most intriguing of the Sisters, a ravishing freak, bony hands inked with sigils, with paleness that matched his own. Seeing his gaze, she drew her wraps to obscure herself. His mild notice might have been heat if Rabbit hadn’t taken his edge off.

The Capable added, with a note of apology, “Change is hard. The History Man said you were interested in how we make the Citadel work.“ Silence gave her a nod and one of his less false smiles. This one, she knew what he’d been. She’d had a close brush with it – one he had witnessed. He’d seen the People Eater lech over her, then snap his fingers to have her delivered to the Immortan, to the Vault and company and decent health. After sharing stories with Rabbit, he was able to take a step back from counting the cost, who’d suffered how much.

The Knowing said, “Our system here isn’t about profit. We’re about survival and resource preservation.”

“More than survival,” the Capable said, firmly.

“Yes! If we’re just surviving, then we’re things, and that’s bad,” Cheedo said.

“There’s just surviving – and then there’s just survival. Just in the sense of righteous, ethical.” The Knowing chopped one hand with the other to emphasize her words. Silence had been the most envious of her out of all the Sisters. She was a fast talker, respected throughout Gastown as the Knowing, an intimate of the Imperator, clearly her heir in waiting. Again, he was stabbed with wanting to talk. But she was going on, with the same Citadel earnestness Rabbit always had. “There’s not a lot of people our age coming out of Gastown.”

Silence shrugged.

The Capable added, “And all of us have something in common.”

“Warlords,” sneered the Knowing.

Silence gave her a sardonic smile and half-raised his tea to her.

“It’s good that you’re here! What do you do now?” asked Cheedo.

This required the slate, and well chosen words.

_aide to the Jade_

_not as high as the Knowing_

The Dag, who knew him the least, asked, “Do you do deals at all?” She said “deals” as if the word was dirty, though Silence gave her a real smile.

_alive + in gtown = dealing_

_ask your History Man_

The Capable said, “He told us about you, and now you’re here, and getting along. Talking to Wretched is something. Do you deal with the Outcrier at all?”

Silence lifted his eyes and wrote:

_SPHINCTER_

It was their turn to really smile. The Capable said, “He is, it’s true. And they’ve made him the Voice of Gastown.”

_try shutting him up_

_deal as needed_

The Capable, again. “For all that she's mostly running Gastown as a woman, the Jade can be difficult in her own right. Is it true that she’s not well?”

Silence wanted to wonder who their spy was. But it was getting to the point where that wasn't necessary. He sat without answering. 

The Knowing said, “You can’t tell us.” Silence nodded, tapped the Gastown sigil on his jacket, and placed his hands together, as if they’d been bound.

All four Sisters exchanged glances. The Dag muttered, “Smeg.”

The Knowing’s expression was hard as onyx. “That settles it. I ask?”

The Sisters all nodded. The Knowing declared. “ _Wordburger: Let’s go ahead and start the future without them._ We’ll be dealing with someone like you in Gastown eventually. Might as well start sooner than later. You dealt all right with the Citadel through the History Man. We propose cutting out the Outcrier as our go-between for Gastown negotiations with the Citadel, and talking to you instead. As a Gastown insider, do you think this could work?”

Silence forgot to breathe. He busied himself over Rabbit’s slate, hoping that his eyes weren’t flashing the silver of guzzoline tokens.

_Jade = live with it_

_Outcrier = pissed_

_+2 so far_

The Knowing and the Dag both laughed.

_can’t have aqua-cola without guzzoline_

_so let’s deal_

The Capable said, “We can try it. The Amnesty’s soon…”

There was a brief exchange of notes and phrases, working out the terms. It was obvious that they hated the Outcrier for refusing to deal with their History Man and forcing Furiosa into a Gastown Race. Silence had witnessed that exchange with his own eyes and told them more about it. He gave them hints on how to win the Jade over to the change, going so far as to point out his ongoing indenture. For the second time that visit, his contract made Citadel eyes widen. 

At the end, they had some terms. As simple as the phrases on the Vault wall, but they'd do. It wasn't a deal yet, but it was tantalizingly close. It was the Capable who said, “We need to write this up for the Jade and Gastown's Board.” She had been Gastown herself. The former concubine had to be here because of her. Dealing was in her bones, as surely as minerals from the dire Gastown groundwater. Silence thought of his previous deals with Citadel women, and hardened himself enough to suggest:

_i garden walk = you write?_

“No, yes, that’s perfect!”

Silence drifted off, or started to. He lingered by a sage plant near the pergola to eavesdrop. They each spoke in turn.

Cheedo said, wanly, “He seems saner than the first time I met him.” 

The Knowing replied, “Saner than the rest of them.”

The Dag was harsh. “Then they’re serious lunatics. I don’t trust him.” 

The Capable spoke. “Trust the rest of them even less."

The Dag snapped, "He asked History for _slaves._ " Silence gritted his teeth. She had Sisters warding her, and the Citadel's tribal net around that. In Gastown, only your mate had your back - or, failing that, your slaves. 

The Knowing said, “And he backed down, took another deal. He can take no for an answer.” 

The Capable declared, "Take any of your fears about this and double them. He’s still our best bad option. Out for himself, but working with us benefits him.” 

A leafy rustle was followed by a rough woman’s voice. “Not being insulted is a good start with Gastown.”

"He can't insult us if he can't talk!" said Cheedo.

The woman chuckled. "No? I'll show you some hand gestures later." Not Smith, but another Vuvalini, who'd probably been following them all. He’d been covered by her guns the entire time. The dire, flattering threat made this good fortune finally seem real.

Silence peered back, seeing the four Sisters and a brown-and-silver desert shadow, hovering over a sheet of paper. Silence recognized the white cotton paper that said the Citadel meant enduring business. They were setting up to write. If this deal went through, it would send the Outcrier into an impotent fury, and send his own value to Gastown through the roof. He’d be untouchable, a target worth having bait thrown in front of _him_.

The guarding War Boy cleared his throat. Silence pretended to ignore him. He hoped that, once he left, they’d do something enjoyable. Somebody around here had to. He, himself, was vibrating with excitement and power. And he knew where to take it. Citadel guards would leave him alone, sooner or later, and then...he knew who he owed for this deal. 

For now, this was a good moment to ease off. He stepped into the gardens, hands behind his back, deliberately not noticing if he had a white-painted shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Verse notes: Silence's self-centered dealings with the History Man are in chapters 3 and 7 of [Fear and Loathing in Gastown](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6654655/chapters/15220333). 
> 
> I write Cheedo at her film canon height, 5 feet 10 inches tall - an inch taller than Max.


	20. Alpha and omega

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rabbit deals with the terrors of success. Notes: Gen chapter.

It was supposed to be a celebration. Rabbit wasn’t very good at these at the best of times. And the conference room was a grim place to have a meal in honour of the successful drilling. The History Man said, “It’s still got - _wordburger: better vibes_ \- than the Immortan’s old dining chamber.” It wasn’t helping that, in all the back and forth, Corpus had broken one of his fragile bones. He had gone grey with pain. Gastown's aged Worksman was also visibly drained. The History Man and the Gastown drillers were the loud and cheerful ones, glad-handing the prentices, making much of the team’s pups. Each side's guards stayed on duty, barely, relaxing and bantering, except for two.

Across the room, in the Worksman’s shadow, lurked the guards named Brute and Force. Neither of them had spoken to Rabbit again. When the food was set out, Rabbit found herself strangely parallel to Force. Each of them stood against opposite walls, neither of them eating or drinking, both staying masked. Rabbit's half-mask concealed her cleft lip. What did his mask hide? To stop thinking about it, Rabbit busied herself with the pups.

She was gratified when the drilling team engaged her in conversation. To hear them talk, the two strongholds, amusingly different, were the heart of the world. They liked Gastown for the same reasons Silence did, reveling in the tech and the trade and variety. They didn't mention its pollution, the beggars, the slaves. 

After watching the drillers talk with Rabbit, the young man who had cycled up the test water came up to her. His name was Welds. Before he outgrew the pipe tunnels, he had been one of Corpus’ long-term pups. Now that he was about Rabbit's age, Corpus had recruited him back from the War Boys. Rabbit thought he was all right. She often drew small diagrams for him to take out on Pumps blackthumb work. And in the Immortan’s day, he had been too young to have stamped down or run over any Wretched. “’Sup. You do okay with the maps?”

Rabbit gave a nod. “You were with the drill team?”

“Yeah. They’re double chrome.” After a distracted moment, Welds asked, “Which one do you think is more handsome?”

Rabbit looked at the Gastown drillers again. They were both normal-framed men, crisply groomed (like Silence) but well into middle age. The one called Delany had the dark skin that kept lucky people healthy. Though the second one, Stephenson, was a whitefella, he looked full-life as well, and his facial hair was very un-Citadel. Rabbit resigned herself to lisping in reply. “They’re very differenth but about the sssame handthome?”

Welds sighed. “That’s what I thought too.” Somehow, this made him radiate misery.

Their conversation was cut short when Imperator Furiosa came in. Rabbit thrilled with admiration at the Imperator’s presence, but always with a stab of worry. For Furiosa wore the the desert face. Among the Wretched, this remote expression meant a piece of Furiosa’s soul was in the perilous Wasteland, waiting for her to heed its call. Tonight, it was intense. It enhanced Furiosa's weary, austere beauty, giving her green eyes a flash like the Wasteland sky. Rabbit said nothing of this to the scientists or Citadel people around her.

She and Welds watched together as Furiosa thanked the Gastown crew, shook the Worksman’s hand. There was applause and a toast in ‘shine. Rabbit kept hold of the small glass she was given. The Imperator and Welds had seen her before she’d found her first mask, but the Gastown crew hadn’t. Keeping track of it all was tiring.

Corpus, unexpectedly, spoke up.  “Our Imperator is neglecting our Citadel talent. Gastown, I hope you like Welds and Rabbit. You’ll be dealing with them in the long term as they take the Pumps team forwards.” There was another brief round of applause as the Pumps’ team’s tacit heirs were named. Welds’ grin was somewhere between delight and terror. Rabbit was paralyzed with shock. This was the opposite of being thrown out of the Citadel. 

The Imperator came up to them afterwards. Between the fate-marked hero in front of her and trying her absolute utmost to not lisp, Rabbit never remembered what either of them said. Welds couldn’t manage much, either. The Imperator took her leave right after.

Soon after, Corpus, the Worksman, and their respective attendants also left, nearly emptying the room. Gastown's drilling pair seemed inclined to talk to Welds more. The History Man hovered around this for a while, finally saying, “You know where a good place is to talk? The Skullmouth. Much more salubrious. Take these two along, show them the view. I’ll stop by in a bit.”

When they were gone, it was only the History Man and Rabbit left. Her mentor let his old shoulders slump. "The Imperator’s not neglecting anybody. Corpus saw a way to stab at her and attacked. I’ll be telling Welds the same thing later. Can you let it go?” Rabbit nodded. It was all politics, all the time, she knew.

History lifted his own small glass to her. In his Tells voice, he intoned, “It is done. _Wordburger: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely_.” He laughed. “Take that, Immortan. This is what I went to graduate school for. 'Study hydrology, you’ll always have a job!' Little did I know.”

Rabbit smiled behind her mask. It was comforting to hear him ramble. She expected him to wordburger more, to indulge in Before-time reminisces, but he turned sharp eyes to her.

“I’m going to cut the rest of my shine with aqua-cola. Goes down easier that way. Helps stretch it out if there's a lot of shine toasts, too.  Shall I do yours, as well?” The History Man had known her when she didn’t have a rag to spare to cover her mouth. Rabbit slid her mask off to taste the extended drink. She mimicked how he sipped, noting it to remember. Shine-in-water tasted medicinal, stung her cleft palate.

“Now that it’s just us. You truly didn’t have any problems with Silence for three days?”

Rabbit swallowed. She missed the mask, then realized she could still use it as a shield. Her lisp forgotten, with History, she said, “He bartered me my mask, months ago, remember?”

History probed, “And this time?"

“I kept him in the main room. The first day, he asked about the Citadel. I told him Wasteland stories instead. The last two days, I wanted to tell him about the maps, but he'd only listen about one or two before going to sleep.”

“I can't think why," History said, starting to smile again.

Rabbit turned her eyes down to her boots, knowing herself disingenuous, protective, weak. She concluded, “He was fine...” 

History was slowed by his own thoughts. "With someone his own age. If he's got a grudge against old men in authority - and God knows he's got _reasons_ -" History downed his glass of shine-and-water in one go, with a shudder. "The Sisters knew what they were doing, as usual." He didn't explain this, changing the subject entirely. “Here. Food with shine, as well.” He handed his untouched small plate to her.

“I saw you didn't eat. Go on. For all the times I couldn’t do this when we were Wretched." Embarrassed again, Rabbit put down the glass to take the plate. She cupped each morsel in her hand to nibble it behind some cover. It was the Citadel’s finest, rich, fresh bites. A lettuce leaf wrapping fine-chopped vegetables and savory roasted insects, slices of grilled squab, sun-dried tomato, fried bean balls. The meat was particularly delicious.

When her mouth was full, the History Man said, gravely, “You’ve done so well. It’s something, in Gastown, to catch the Worksman’s eye. That’s what led Corpus to show off. That, and you going from strength to strength learning this place. Corpus isn’t wrong. I've been going on at him about planning for the long term. He said he'd keep his eye open for polymaths, if he could find them. And now that he has…” History sighed. “He’s dropped you and Welds in it. When he and I are gone, it'll be you two keeping this place hydrated and educated. Good luck keeping our own Council from squandering what we’ve gained today.”

"They listen to you and Corpus," Rabbit said.

"They have, for fourteen oldmonths. The Wasteland outside shows that government listening to science is the exception, rather than the rule." History watched her put the plate down and said, gently, "We can talk more later. I need to go say most of that again to Welds."

“Are you in the barracks tonight? Or on the ground?” Rabbit asked. 

“I'm stuck up here. Treadmill's shut, and I hate those rappel drops."

Rabbit remembered what Silence had said to her. “Why don’t you get a room of your own? A real bed? You could.” She wasn’t sure if she could change her bed (or if she wanted to) but the History Man definitely could.

“Trying to be more virtuous than Corpus – not that his suite is a vice for him, with his difficulties. Clinging to being Wretched, I suppose.” He yawned. “Repeating history…”

“I’m tired too. I’ll go back to my room.”

“Can I walk you anywhere? I trust that Gastown crew as far as I can throw them.”

Rabbit replaced her mask and shook her head. “I’ll take the back stairs.”

“You’re sure?”

Rabbit rolled her eyes. “I’ll be fine. I’m not old!”

That got a laugh out of him. “If you’re starting to boss me around, bright eyes, you’re in your prime. I’ll go see how Welds is doing.”

Rabbit halted him with a touch for a short, awkward hug. His bare shoulders were thin, his skin warm and papery. Oh, he was old. In his ear, she whispered, “Thank you. For all of it.” _Everything_ was a word she avoided, with her lisp. She darted away.

The path to the back stairs, the ones she usually took, traced past a small open balcony. Rabbit paused: there was a line of sundown red on the horizon still. Inside her skull, the slightest of aches pulsed. She removed her mask, reflecting that it was easier to do this, too, after Silence’s kisses. Then, she tasted the air. It wasn’t particularly dusty or strange. Perhaps there was a storm coming, still mustering. If it wasn't close enough to bring her a full storm headache, it wasn't close enough to say anything. People didn’t like maybes. She hadn’t been enjoying a half-day of maybes. She would go drink some water and see if that helped.

Water was life. In this world, life was a fight. History had opened her eyes to a long fight inside the Citadel, one that would place her between Corpus, her benefactor, and the rest of the Council, women she admired deeply. Politics seemed like fighting, to her. Wretched life had taught her what it meant to be between two warring gangs. She shuddered. She didn't want to find out what that would be like inside the Citadel. She wanted to give people water, and do the work around that, and learn, and draw. She already missed the perfect zone of drawing in Silence’s company. 

Silence and his life, so similar to hers, with its constant threats, and so different. She had come to an understanding about his story. He’d survived the Thrall Rustlers, but lost his history. He'd survived Gastown, too, at the cost of his voice and more. Always alone. History and death had a hold on him, had done something to the core of him. The spin of it had turned him towards her. Did that mean it was good or bad?

Now, she was going to go down to her room and something else would happen - a rejection, a reunion, possibly both - and she’d never be the same. Alpha and omega: the end and the beginning. She felt as she had on the dawns of her Wretched days, small and worried, between the Citadel and the Wasteland. She lifted her chin, replaced her mask. What would happen, would happen. This was her life. She didn’t have anything else. She would follow the irresistible path of it tonight.

As she had resolved, it led to her room. She felt strong about this until she closed the door. Drawing was beyond her. She tiptoed out to drink aqua-cola and refill her glass bottle. This done, she laid her tool belt down in its usual spot and surveyed her possessions, trying to see them with Silence’s eyes. 

 _You should have more_ , Silence had said. But the more you had, the greater the risk of loss or violence. From her Wretched life, she had a few rags, her warped old plastic bottle, and the disintegrating anorak bequeathed to her by the History Woman. Its pockets had held half a comb, a palm-sized round of light metal framing a cracked mirror, and a rumpled, coverless book. Distance was impossible. Each item felt like a part of her. 

Her room, itself, was a tremendous thing, peace and privacy.  She should have told Silence about all the things belonging to the Citadel that she could borrow or enjoy: tools and books; spaces like the workshops, the gardens, the Mothers' baths; others' Tells and music. It was all right, she decided, to be in the same spaces as those things without owning, simply being. For the things and herself alike would have been ground to sand by now, without the Citadel. 

Rabbit combed her hair and flicked through the book. Wordburgers that Miss Giddy had underlined long ago stood out as she browsed. _My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun…Love me not for comely grace, for my pleasing eye or face.... From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favour fire…._ _When (being fool to fancy) i have deemed / with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise…_

That last poem clenched Rabbit’s heart. It went on: _silence moulds/ such strangeness as was mine a little while;/moments when my once more illustrious arms/ are filled with fascination, when my breast/ wears the intolerant brightness of your charm_ s –

There was a light rapping on her door. She flew to it, to find out what it was going to be, with Silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wordburgers! 
> 
> _I am Alpha and Omega:_ The Old Testament, Revelation 21:6
> 
> Poetry lines from Miss Giddy’s anthology are from: [ Sonnet 130 ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/45108)  
> [ Love me not for comely grace](http://www.mibba.com/Poems/Read/113437/Love-Me-Not-For-Comely-Grace/)  
> [Fire and Ice and](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44263)  
> [it is at moments after i have dreamed](http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1607/it-is-at-moments-after-i-have-dreamed/)


	21. a trip to the Wasteland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rabbit succumbs to Silence's extremes - and the results are a visionary shock to them both. Warnings: Explicit. Het sex, recreational substance use, extreme penetration, relatively light body horror.

Rabbit opened her door to find Silence standing rakishly outside, fully masked. Sauntering in past her, all confidence, he stripped off his mask and jacket as he crossed her room. At her bed, he rearranged her cushion pile as he liked it, then flung himself down. Rabbit followed him and perched on the edge of the concrete that held the bed. There was a look about him, not merely sharp, but focused: some new purpose.

Rabbit asked, “How was it?”

Silence had begun to write before she asked, and he filled the slate up.

_you were right_

_get them to talk_

_they want me to deal for gtown_

She handed back the slate. “Is that good?”

_BEST_

Happiness illuminated him. He was devastating. Irresistible. The Citadel was surely going to roll over to give him whatever he wanted. They were in as much trouble as she was.

Rabbit swallowed and asked a classic Citadel question. “Which one of the Sisters did you like best?” Silence waved a flat hand, dismissively, and rubbed his fingers together in the barter gesture. Then he wrote. His reply seemed to have nothing to do with her question.

_something different?_

“What do you mean?”

In response, Silence leaned over and snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her in. She gasped when he reached up to the knot of her halter and pulled her down by it, to trace his free hand over her mask. When she quivered, he reached behind her neck. Slowly, he unfastened her mask.  Having his arms reaching behind, caging her lightly, was again agonizingly close to the embraces she craved. Rabbit submitted to having the mask's light weight lifted away, exposure and cool air striking her. The snarl of her cleft lip tightened with nerves. Yet this was nothing different, with him. Trying to breathe smoothly, Rabbit said, "I still don't know what you mean."

Silence lifted a hand with three fingers raised. He dug into the jacket beside him and pulled out a tarnished flask. Pouring a capful, he tilted it at her with a brilliant smile. It was another toast – this time, to her. He downed it. Next, he filled the cap and held it out to her, offering. 

Rabbit didn’t think for a second of diluting the shot. She was preoccupied with the wonder of him drinking to her, the enduring stab of taking her mask off. Instead, she treated it like water, trying to drink half of it, and she was sorry. This stuff was like a mouthful of guzzoline. It set her coughing and gasping for a solid minute. Silence shook his head, smiling more, close to laughter. When Rabbit handed back the half of the shot, he tossed it back, too. Then, he levered up and pressed his shine-wet mouth to hers.

“Oh! Your mouth burns,” she gasped. Despite the sting along her cleft lip, she didn’t pull away. By the time he’d shared three more shine-hot kisses with her, Rabbit was laughing a little, dizzy with relief. To Rabbit's eyes, Silence was one of the few to match the Sisters. But whichever one of them he admired, he was here with her, for this last night. They had both their tops off now, trousers and boots on, like two apprentices expecting to get called back to work. Silence pointed at her lower half and snapped his fingers. She obeyed, stripping herself right away.

Silence made it clear that she was to lie down on the bed. Rabbit only stayed down for a moment, jerking up at what he did next. He poured a half-shot of the shine over her breasts, making her skin sting and tighten. Instantly, he was on her, mouthing up the shine, biting and sucking. She raised her body, craving the smooth warmth of his touch. Silence held her down as he followed the searing trail to her navel. He turned his knuckles in the liquor pooled there, held his fingers up to her lips. Rabbit guessed he wanted her to lick his fingers clean. His flesh burned, when she tasted it, as did her skin at his radiant, wordless approval.

Without any more preliminaries, he reached down to start fingering her, harder than before. Though she knew herself wet and eager, he paused to stroke petroleum gel into her, the scent of it making her heart beat faster. The silken slickness melting between her legs made it almost too easy for him to penetrate her.

Silence trailed his hand up her chest, leaving a glossy line. Then it was his turn to drag off his boots and trousers. Unlike two nights ago, he was artless about it. Rabbit sensed he was concentrating on something else. Before settling back down, he dug into his jacket pocket, to hold something small and dark in his hand. Scowling, he wiped his fingers on his skin before he could open it. It was a curious, tiny jar, medicinal. When Silence saw her watching, he held the opened jar under one elegant nostril and inhaled. Then, he held it in front of her face.

Rabbit had never received the warnings about Gastown drugs: those in the Citadel who had offered her medicines always meant well. She took a breath. It was medicinal, all right, dizzying and warming. “That’s strange,” she said. The intense emotions of the past few days seemed to glow through her body. She put her hand over her rushing, open heart.

Silence flourished it for her again, and rolled his hand: go on, more. She inhaled deeper. This time, her mind blinked out for a moment. She wasn’t sure what she’d inhaled, but she was grateful to it. Tension and fear and her maybe-storm headache were gone. Her cleft lip felt erased. She knew now where the path of fate, that she’d sensed earlier, led: not out, but down, into herself. 

Silence’s free hand pressed her shoulder, driving her down into her cushions. The fabric felt miraculously soft, as it had been the first night she’d nestled into the pillows, known they were hers. Then, Silence’s fingers were taking her cunt. Details were hard to discern in her divine absence, only a knot of penetrating pressure, firm and slick, kindling, beckoning.

She let her eyes shutter and gave herself over to feeling.

* * *

Silence gave himself a second light hit of the nitrite, the briefest inhale, feeling himself go warm and easy. Then, he put it away. He’d never shared his stash with anyone before. But he owed Rabbit, who had helped him win over the Sisters, the best of him: both what he was carrying and what he could do.

Silence curled his lip, remembering Force’s words on the way into the Citadel. He had his speciality, all right. It was sterile, well within his deal with Rabbit. It had enough physical distance to reassure those who cared about disease. Gastown’s nihilistic debauched bartered high with him for it, matched with his bait face and trimness. He’d never shared it freely, either, until now. Rabbit would remember it, and him.

It was a relief to be back in this room, tangled up in the dim-lit artwork and pillows and Rabbit’s welcoming body. The Sisters’ beautiful bare faces had been a set of hard mirrors, reflecting clear the damage he shared with them. Compared to them, Rabbit was raw. Animal. Vulnerable. He could take her more thoroughly than anyone else – feeling more than with anyone else, while he did.

He sent three fingers sinking into her quim, her pure wetness sleeking down his wrist. Ruthlessly, he held off from what he’d learned would make her come, kept his fingers straight, folded his hand to get the fourth finger introduced.

When she squirmed with hunger, Silence took one of her hands and smacked it onto her own breast. She picked up this cue immediately, exploring herself for him to watch. _Trainable_ , he thought, and started as his cock pulsed.

When Silence pulled out his hand, Rabbit’s heavy eyelids lifted. By her dreaming gaze, the nitrate still had her. He gestured to her to wait. Silence dove back into his lube tin and slid a second round of it over her cunt. He dragged Rabbit’s own slow, obedient hand down, encouraging her to work the stuff into herself.

While she did that, Silence lubed his right hand, folding it into a tight diamond. He laced the tip of this down through her labia, nudging her own hand away, to her cunt’s tender opening. There, he began to drill his hand in. He spiraled it slowly, twisting to go deep. With the nitrate relaxing her, he was able to work the width of his thumb in, then fold his hand inside to a fist, before she tensed up. She gave a sudden, singing moan. In response, he shook his fist, then tapped her once with his left hand.

She was vague with bewilderment. “Y-yes?” she managed.

Silence bared his teeth in a grin and began to turn her inside out.

He built it up slow, from turning his hand and vibrating his arm to a subtle pistoning. He had to stay very gentle: the least movement resonated, he could tell. Her organs clenched tight and blood-hot around his hand, tighter when she began to come. With her eyes shut and her face contorted with pleasure, her deformity scarcely mattered. Anyone coming that hard was crushed and twisted by it, made ugly as beauty seized them.

Orgasm changed her breathing into girlish, sharp gasps. Her feminine cries were maddeningly arousing. Silence had the black thought that he could make a profit with her in Gastown merely by letting someone listen in. He heard a feral snarl and realized it was him, releasing his own tension into raw, tongueless sound. His cock was brushing his own flat stomach as Rabbit was hit by her second orgasm.

Rabbit was arching her back to get more room inside her pelvis, her arms up behind her head. Lantern light caught her breasts. Her third orgasm, slower in coming, was signalled by flat-out whimpering, then fractured moans. He kept moving. He was blank now, hard and burning, nothing but one wild pulse mastering another.

Rabbit opened her eyes wide, with the suddenness of pain, but utterly silent. The angle of her head and the shadows conspired to make her cleft lip bare the skull-edge above her exposed teeth. He stopped, waited for her scream or moan, but there was nothing – a nothing that chilled him like one of her Wasteland stories. Just as he reached for her with his free hand, her eyelids closed. Equally suddenly, she went hot, shuddered, and moaned out one bright note, all at once.

Again her eyes opened, but this time, they caught the light. She breathed, fearful, “Wait. Are you. Are you here?”

Silence allowed himself to snarl in reply, and started to move his arm again. “Oh. Ohhhh!” He kept moving, wanting to keep her hot and alive around him, to wrest out one more peak cry. It didn’t take much, only rocking his fist against the upper walls inside her, to make her whip her tangled head back and forth in ecstasy. He had one thigh jammed under her, levering her hips up. She was so wet now her juices slicked down onto him. This time, when she went still, he withdrew.

Rabbit made the bright moan again and reached for him. He wasn’t going far, pressing her waist back with one forearm to get his face in her cunt, to inhale what he’d done. She was richly swollen, tainted with the petroleum lube and traces of ammonia and blood. Fluid streaked down her shaking thighs. He’d never been so hard in his life.

Silence levered up her body, easing apart her legs. Despite their deal, no breeding, her cunt was irresistible. He slid his cock against the lush cleft, allowed himself to stab in.  She was hot, liquid, perfect. Rabbit turned her head with a gasp but, still speechless, allowed everything. Silence tortured himself with exactly ten searing thrusts into her before pulling out. Coming was sweet obliteration. Drained and ringing, he collapsed, directly on her. He could feel that he’d stained her from her hips to her collarbones.

They lay together, Silence heaving with rasping breaths, flexing his sticky right fist. Beneath him, Rabbit shifted at last. And began to astound him again.

“Listen,” she said. “Listen. While you…did that…something happened. I went away.” Rabbit slid to lie beside him, her skin oddly cold.

What was she talking about? Silence shifted, too, and caught her eyes, gleaming and shadowed, watched her biting her lower lip. When she spoke, she sounded possessed.

“I wasn’t here. I was somewhere else. Something else. It was…south of here. Outside. But not Wasteland.”

“It was better.”

“I was on a tree. Did the Sisters show you trees, in our gardens? This was a wild one, in the earth, taller than any of them.

I wasn’t in the tree like a climbing person. A fringed yellow flower and a leaf – that was me. And I fell.

I span down, and down, through light, pale light, kind light. Until I landed…in…water.

A whole pool of good water, outside. Like in the Before-time, when the world wasn't wasteland. Except I know it was now. _It was somewhere real._

I span in the water. I was dying, as a flower, and I didn’t mind, because the water felt so good, like…like being covered in water does, except _all_ the water, and _all_ the light. I drifted on the surface. It was forever. It was a breath.  

Then, I was on the water’s edge. And something came up. An animal, with four legs. An animal! Alive! It moved the way you do, like poetry. The animal put its face in the water and drank, then it saw me. It had four little feet, and it put one in the water near me, to try and catch me. Like a Citadel child plays with a leaf. Everything shattered and flowed and went up, the light and the water together, playing –“

“Then I was here? It was so strange!” She stopped, wrapping one arm around herself.

“Did that make any sense?”

Silence stared at Rabbit for a good long moment.

The lantern’s flame set a warm gleam in her wide eyes while she waited for his reply.

He had no idea what to do. This had never happened before.

Silence took too long. Rabbit’s eyes compressed in sudden fear. Her hand hid the lower half of her face as she turned away.

Silence dug out his shine flask. He sculled down what was left. It made his mouth numb, and that was good. The art on the walls swam. If he wanted to slide into something like sleep, it was close. But he’d rarely trusted someone enough to sleep with them, let alone this. With the burn still in his throat, he flung himself over Rabbit, pinning her before she could curl up into a ball.

Rabbit turned to meet him. Her eyes met his, well-dark, well-deep. “I’m not mad. I saw what I saw. That place…it’ll start the new world. The one that’s on her way, like the History Woman said.”

He shook his head, trying to show he didn’t understand. Rabbit reached up to him, looping her left arm around his shoulders. As if she shared her greatest secret, she breathed in his ear, “I. I wish you were staying longer, to do that again…” She hid her face in the crook of his neck. Her skin was still cold, for her. He snaked his right arm around her shoulders, too, crushing her to him. “Thank you,” Rabbit murmured.

After that, she went still, her breathing going even. She was so drained and shocked, she hadn’t attempted to clean up. Silence felt her go heavy with sleep. Her mouth and her cleft-exposed incisor rested against his collarbone. The sharp mineral triangle of the tooth pressed against an artery, stabbing his pulse.

Silence tightened his arm, clinging to what had just happened, the superb high of it all. He’d unmasked her to spear her on his hand, drawing up the knowing of his past while conquering its terrors. Without barter, he'd given and taken, and felt the power in it. She'd given him everything in return, her body and her Wasteland seeing, and confessed she wanted more. Do it again, yes. And again. But when? He left tomorrow. This was, suddenly, a disaster.

Silence was wracked by the impossibility of leaving this wretched excuse for a bed. This Wretch. Two thousand seven hundred seventy-one days separated from – without this - brought back that Wasteland chill. Until he moved a hand down her bare back to her right hip.

There. He’d brand her exactly there.

Then the back of her neck would be free for the Gastown brand.

Even as his private property, she’d need that protection.

Rabbit nestled into him, hunting warmth. Silence pulled her in. He was reeling with the final shots of shine and the inspired perfection of his idea. Rabbit had been a Citadel throwaway. She was unbranded, unsigned, his for the claiming. The way she reacted, she was wired to give in, to be owned and tamed. She liked piled-up cushions, crisp crickets, Before-time papers? He’d barter them for her. She wouldn’t have to do anything but her own drawings. And him. 

There was more to her than that. Her knowing about oil and water gave her value. All her advice had been solid. Wretched, she had suffered, yet survived, Wasteland perils. Her stories and absolute surrender infused Silence with her resilience. If he could drink that in from her dark eyes every night, draw strength from the calmness about her every day, nothing would stop him.

Beside him, Rabbit shifted again. Silence let her bring her knees up. He folded himself back around her, plotting and planning. By the time she woke up, it would all be clear in his mind. He could tell her then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Silence's drug is butyl nitrite. If you expand Mad Max canon to include the video game, mineral-sourced inhalant drugs - nitrous oxide and something called _fume_ \- are canon, specifically in and around Gastown. Amyl nitrite and butyl nitrite are also mineral/acid sourced and are currently used recreationally as poppers.


	22. You could come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa steals a moonlit night away from the Citadel with Max, his car, and a Wasteland road.  
> Notes: Explicit het sex, with a vehicle in a supporting role.  
> Inspired by [this stunning NSFW image by Youkaiyume](http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/post/143662436793/smut-ahead-more-inappropriate-vehicular).

Furiosa slammed the scarred, heavy doors of the conference room and forced herself to walk. Her pace lasted until she reached a staircase. There, she could spring into a sprint, down nine Citadel stories.

Every door opened for her, every guard stood back. This was how she had walked the Citadel since the Immortan had smeared an Imperator’s black across her forehead. Some days, it felt like her life had barely changed from those tense, hate-filled years, when her power increased as her soul shriveled. Other days, it was far worse, for the stakes had risen. The Citadel around her held a new way of being, people she cared about. As its Warlord, she had dodged assassination, ordered raids, compromised herself with alliances. That was familiar. Endurable. As Citadel life changed around her, its challenges grew stranger. Whenever she felt like she could look back and understand the Immortan, it was time to lean into those challenges. Like today.

Today had been awful: hours of tension at the beck and call of old men, waiting to see if they were killing the Sisters’ green place. More than once, she had told herself what Max had said before the final turn of the Fury Road. _It’ll be a bad day_.

And it was over.  

At last, she came to a door that had been blocked to her in the past: the Wellhead door. This, Furiosa opened herself, with the keys that had once been the Immortan’s. She had a vague, swimming memory of the Sisters pressing those keys into her hand in the Gigahorse, four hundred and some days back. Max had folded his own hand around hers to press them secure. She remembered that, when she didn't remember Max telling her his name.

The Wellhead’s dark was settling into its disturbing rusty chill again. The strange cold of the place had always gone straight to Furiosa’s bones, channeled by her metal arm. She went hard down the Wellhead stairs, leapt off the Wellhead itself, and shot to one of the Citadel’s many secrets: the Green Tower's back exit. Corpus had never mentioned that door until another Citadel woman opened it for Furiosa. Then he'd acted like she should have known, all along.

Corpus was never stupid. Today, the exit was blocked behind stacked crates, higher than her head. Furiosa inhaled through her nose and set herself to wrestle them out of the way. There had been so much battle and tension, these past two hundred days, she had plenty of muscle for this. It was a relief to shove and grunt and snarl, instead of picking words and radiating menace to match Corpus and Gastown.

Finally, the exit was clear. Furiosa eased the door open. After the Wellhead, the Wasteland outside was luminous with the night sky, caressingly warm. With her steel hand and her flesh one, she dropped herself outside the door, hanging onto its lowest edge. Below her was a two-meter drop easing into a scree-covered slope. Furiosa kicked herself a foothold further down, lowered her hands, and used her right arm to bat the door closed. It sealed with a clang.

She was locked out of the Citadel for the night.

Furiosa slid down the drop, onto the scree, and landed neatly on her feet at the bottom of the slope. She shook out her sinews and looked around. She was not alone. Someone had been on guard outside that secret entrance all day, waiting to see if Gastown had learned too much about the Citadel. He had emerged from a dark, low-slung car to stand wary, focused on the Citadel’s Imperator. The moonlight drained his ruddiness, turned his hair into an unremarkable dark smear. His shape was still strong.

After the company she’d been keeping, Furiosa saw him anew. A man, compared to the children and youths around Corpus, rough-edged next to the fast-talking Gastown experts, a thoughtful rival to Gastown’s killing guards. A survivor whose eyes held secrets, like her own. The Wretched left behind their past Citadel suffering more readily than he did, nightmares claiming him yet when they slept together. The two of them were – Furiosa reclaimed the Vuvalini word inside her own mind – lovers.

“Max,” she said. “They’re done. It worked. Anything here?”

Max shook his head.

“Nobody tried it?”

Max grunted.

“Sorry you didn’t get to shoot anyone from Gastown?”

Max huffed once, amused.

Furiosa turned and looked up at the towering height of the Citadel. The cliff of it reared tall and blind, here, a fortress against the world, blending into the night sky. She murmured, “I can go now.”

Max dove into one of his many pockets. “Now?” He tilted his head at the vehicle beside him.

This wasn’t what Furiosa had meant. She meant she could leave the Citadel, if she wanted to. The Wasteland around was in a rare equilibrium, still clear of threats after the Triumverate’s scorched-earth raids. The Citadel had thirty thousand days’ more water after the well expansion. The Sisters had found a way to stand working with Gastown. New plants grew. Even Corpus claimed to be able to do more, freed from his father's strictures. Citadel cogs and mills requiring fewer human hands were appearing, and Corpus' new storm warnings seemed to be accurate. The place was starting to feel redeemed.

Not that she was any judge of that, after her own time as a raider and Imperator. For a long time, the Citadel's people had been split as harshly as its three towers: its slaves and breeders, its full-lives and War Boys, and the powerful, helping themselves to others' bodies as they wished. In her strange trajectory, she had edged through all three roles. 

She knew the Citadel’s secrets. And wished that she didn’t…

Furiosa said nothing. She got into Max’s car.

Max was at the ignition in an instant, like he’d been aching to drive off all day. He hadn’t, in fact. It had been pleasant, sitting outside in the shade, alone and undisturbed. His back to the Citadel, he’d watched the clouds and listened. It would have been a perfect day to get back some of the blood Gastown owed him. By the time it was clear it wouldn’t come to that, he’d snatched a kip in the car, still waiting. Furiosa had said she would come to him. She was reliable, like that.

As for the blood the Citadel owed him –

He drove away with Furiosa.

Speed slammed Furiosa’s whole body back against her seat. Max kept her there by driving hard. He was heading east, for no reason that she could discern, until he took the car off road onto the dune ripples. The chassis bumped and swayed, the movement jolting Furiosa’s legs and seat and crotch. She grinned. Max caught her smile, succumbed to a half-smirk of his own, and took them back onto the track.

She turned to Max's hands on the wheel, steering light and sure, and felt herself warm. For all her terrible successes since the Fury Road, it was Max’s rare presence that made her feel like she was getting what she wanted.  Both Max and his car made her want to go deep: get inside, gauge reactions, go out to the Wasteland to really let rip.  She wanted her choice of a lover and where to have him, a few containers of water to go see what was on the horizon, her own self. The Citadel gave these things to the thousand-plus it sheltered – but not to its Warlord. She was stealing this night.

Soon, Max had slowed down. He had to. The clear night had blurred around them into a blue haze. Furiosa said, “Is something burning? I don’t smell smoke.” By reflex, she reached for the rifle on Max’s dashboard.

Max pulled over into a gully beside the track. “Water in the air. Don’t get it much up here.” He said words new to Furiosa from his lips. “It’s nice.” With the engine cut, they listened to the Wasteland together for a moment. Max opened his door.

He watched Furiosa unfold from the car. The alert tilt of her head, her body’s spring-steel readiness between an arm of muscle and an arm of metal, made his throat dry. In his Wasteland wanderings, he could count people as strange and splendid as her on one hand. Most others, to him, were wary and threatening, more at home in this harsh world than he would ever be. Sometimes they sought to close the gap for more intimate deals. Max had backed away from treacherous bait, hard-eyed flesh workers, wanderers fey with anarchy or madness, warlords seeking to stake their claim. With Furiosa, the blood of the Fury Road had closed the gap between them before he knew it. They were beyond deals, and his want of her was beyond words.

Furiosa arced her long neck. She hadn’t breathed with such deep relief since the day Scrotus Scabrous had died. The mist was different from the chill, rust-edged humidity of the Wellhead. This was soft and cool, with the slightest mineral note. Furiosa’s childhood came back to her, and nights later than that, sneaking out to see Val, her young blood burning. Her few drives with Max came back as well, when, for a few hours, they’d shared speed and machines, clean air, hot privacy. Both sets of memories blurred like the misted landscape into pure desire.

Max, too, drank in the moist air and exhaled. For all the times she’d said _Max you don’t have to_ when he brought salvage, he could never quell the urge. With nothing physical to hand, he offered, “Driving out, I’d put up a tarp. Catch the water from it, get enough for, mmmm, a day. More reliable near the coast, or the green place down south." The green place Max had found, scouting on the Citadel's behalf.

The further away from the Citadel they went, the more Max spoke. Furiosa said, “That’s how you keep going.”

She saw Max’s possessed blankness take him. “Mnh. How I keep moving.” He lowered his eyes. "Need more scouting?

"Maybe."

"Mmm hmm." Max went terse. “The road..." He stopped. The prospect of more suffering for him, on behalf of the Citadel, closed him down.

Furiosa kept her voice measured. “Say the way, someone else can drive.” Her reflexes shifted; her steel hand curling to grip a steering wheel that wasn’t there.

Max mumbled. “Got lost both ways. But…” He lifted his face, and said clear, “I’d go again.”

She couldn’t have asked him to. There was something he couldn’t ask Furiosa, either, a bond for her to break. “ Two of those tarps – would they trap water for two?” She said, simply, “I could go.”

Max blinked. He’d ached for her countless nights on the journey he’d done. “You could come?”

She nodded.

The idea spun around them like the thickening mist, with its danger and potential.

Furiosa held out her hand to Max.

He took it to find himself pulled deeper than a handshake, into her living arm.

They came together, unspeaking. Max sank into her gratefully, crushing her to him, a fighter’s embrace. He couldn’t say which of them was stronger. When he pressed his face against her neck, her skin was hot. She leaned into him, slightly down, and ran her mouth across his forehead. The idea of Furiosa, a car, and a nigh-endless road together replaced his slow burn of guilt with another fire.

With her nose in his cowlicked hair, Furiosa savoured the salty musk of him. The mist grew cooler against her rising, reeling heat. The strange air was a breath of a purer time, moist enough to send tendrils of clean desire through her, as if she had only ever been a Vuvalini adventurer. The vehicle and Max's Wasteland namelessness tempted as much as the man. She felt she had earned a life like the past she should have had, if only for a brief time, for one journey. Starting with this night.

There was only one support against the stone and sand around: the car. With a firm move, Furiosa turned and sank, dragging Max down with her. The hood was pleasantly warm under her. Max had almost exactly the same level of heat against the front of her body as the car against her back, as if the man and the machine were two halves of the same being.

Max let her momentum take him down to his knees in front of her. Furiosa’s legs settled wide. The leather trousers over her delta had worn down, fine and sueded, free of the heavy sigil she’d once worn. His face fit perfectly against the spread of her. He rolled his skull, shaking loose his last intrusive thoughts as the sharp, warm smell of her filled him. Preparing to go down for her was warm animal respite from the world's fall. When Max sank down fully, he gasped – in pain. “Fuck.”

He surged back up, clenching his bad knee. Furiosa half-hauled him when he paused. “Fucking Wasteland. How…” He looked down at her in hapless hunger.

“The fast way,” said Furiosa. As if about to win a fight, she stood and reversed. Now she faced the vehicle, with Max’s crotch neatly slotted below the curve of her ass. She undid her last belt and drew down her trousers, then slid against him as the leather fell, just enough. She rocked her head back to lean against his shoulder and used the rest of her body to grind.

This was Wasteland love for a damaged man. But she’d dredged the position out of the darkest depths of her Citadel years. She numbed and tightened with recollection. Then Max, behind her, drew a deep, shuddering breath. His palm cruised her exposed skin, the same reverent touch he used across the hood of his car. He nudged against her and moaned, pleading, “This. This would be good.”

Furiosa leaned down over the hood. Between Max and his car, she didn’t feel pinned.  She felt strong and secure. The car’s soft-wheeled settle beneath her was reassuring, its dark-sanded finish smooth to the touch. Max placed his right hand over hers, yearning, not forcing. She could feel the divot of scar in his palm, his toll from the Fury Road. She’d chosen this. She looked over her shoulder and said what had started their Citadel run. “Let’s do this.”

Heavy-handed, he groped for her prosthetic’s straps. “Your arm –“

“It stays.” If she was going to the Wasteland with him, she’d better get used to it. She settled her two hands, flesh and metal, on the car hood. “See?” She rocked back into him.

“Fuck,” Max groaned. He took his hand back and got busy with the front of his own trousers. His solid cock, close to stiff, weighed his hand. He wasn’t the only one who needed to be ready. Favoring his knee, he bent at the waist and did his best to slip his mouth’s wetness over Furiosa. The live musk of her fogged his brain like fume. He sent his tongue everywhere, desperate in his hunger and his urge to ease what he was now burning to do.

Furiosa arched. Back from scouting, Max hadn’t settled in the Citadel, exactly. He’d been hovering around for weeks, time for her to rediscover ease in her body. She’d thought to order him to lick her just so, go ahead and get started – but stopped. With only two lives at stake, and the Citadel’s darkness distant, there was less need to fight everything around her for a place to be. Things could get a little wild. Feral. She spread as wide as she could against her trousers’ bondage, with a keening breath.

That carnal sound triggered Max. He straightened, clasped the light curves of her hips. Against the pale scar-striped flesh of her, his hands looked rough, his shaft raw and straining, all pulse and ache. He sank himself home.

The car was heavy beneath Furiosa now, bracing her easily. This was as good as it had ever been, inside her. No, it was better. She was in a perfect balance between man and machine, moved and supported. Her slickness eased his thrusts. She moved with Max until that pistoning ignited her. She thrashed, gasping wildly, and let his weight rock her in rare surrender. For an instant she felt united with him, metal and flesh, heat and coolness, pinned still and expanding free.

Max gazed down. Furiosa and the car were together below him. Her steel arm tangled with the engine’s chargers. Muscles seized him, then relaxed. He felt her take his weight and recognized the rarest thing in all the Wasteland, trust. All his compulsions spun into one moment. This was everything, too much to bear alone. His blinding climax folded him against Furiosa with a hoarse shout.

Furiosa laid her cheek to the metal and felt her breath steam it. Her heart knocked like a cooling engine. She arced her spine, Max lifting with her, then pulling himself up and away. She stretched up and back to stay with him, keeping her flesh hand on his hip, turning so he could see her smile. She felt human again. There wasn’t any way to get clean. She said nothing as she pulled her trousers back up. Grunge was about to be good to her. The Wasteland might not recognize Imperator Furiosa under a month’s hair and grime.

Max stood guard as Furiosa arranged herself. He felt blank relief. This was one of the moments when a piece of his blasted soul was refined and returned, good as dropping off one of his rescues at the Citadel or starting _his_ car's ignition. Would his life hold more of them? If Furiosa let him take them both away from the Citadel, possibly. What they might rescue was so large, he couldn't grasp it. It would cloud his mind like the Wasteland around if he tried. Best to focus on the vehicle and the road. And Furiosa.

Furiosa was still light-headed. Sitting down on the car hood the other way around turned her west. From here, the Citadel was visible on the horizon, picked out with lights. It was small enough on the horizon that she could hold it in one hand. Its lights had a pull. She thought of the Sisters, her War Boys, her Vuvalini. But a warm wind stroked around the three of them, her and Max and the car. The mist dissolved, spiralling into scraps on the wind. The movement felt right. The journey she’d never finished yearned inside her, too large for the Citadel, needing these great turns of sand and sky.

Furiosa weighed her power. If she asked Max to drive away with her this moment, and never return, he would.

She detoured. “Your green place’s road. You never said how hard it was.”

Max's answer circled around that. “Bad days, driving back, I’d think about the last thing I saw there. One of the wild dogs. Playing around with a leaf in the water.” Again, Max said that uncharacteristic phrase. “It was nice.”

If the place could balm Max’s tortured soul, it was worth the road.

Furiosa allowed herself a final moment to bask in Max and the car and the feel of redemption. She tapped the hood. “If we're together. Get this up on the first Treadmill, show me its ins and outs?”

“Mmm.” Max hated taking his car up. War Boys couldn’t stay away from it, though they knew to keep a distance from him, let ferals and Wretched go to him instead. After how Furiosa had given herself, he could give a day of his life to the Treadmill Bay. “We’ll do that.”

Furiosa settled back into the seat. She’d stolen this night, the women now called the Sisters, the Citadel. She’d steal herself back, too.

One journey at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Verse notes: Rabbit opens the Wellhead door for Furiosa in [A Handful of Dust.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4456166)
> 
> Where's this green place? Max found it in the post-Fury Road story [Very Max, Such Wasteland, Much Dog.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5342645)


	23. Feral death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Des and Force, together at last. Stripped bare, which one is the greatest primal terror? Plus: the origin of Gastown's Polecats!
> 
> Warnings: It's a rough one. _All new_ body horror, teratophilia, several discussions of murder, femdom, bondage, anal sex, edge play.

It was very late. In her little room, Des leaned against her window frame, fingertips brushing the plant in its skull-shaped pot. She turned to the man beside her. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

Force said, “The job went fine. They're all mates now.”

Force was beside her, leaning out the window itself.  “What are you looking at?” Des asked, irritated. Des had followed him, boxing him in. It would be easy for him to grab her – or vice versa.

“Been in a Joe-damn hole all day. It’s good to breathe.” Des raised an eyebrow. Force remained encased, head to toe, in his black leather.

The moon, full tonight, was at its highest over the Citadel courtyard. Fluid and confident, Force leaned out further, bracing himself lightly with one arm to peer down. “Why’s there still Wretched down there? Always wondered how they were alive. You’re some princess above it all, as a breeder. Safe, fed, watered. A pretty rat in your cage.”

Des said, “We’re all Citadel now.” Her fingertips brushed the plant’s leaves for proof.

Force turned from the window. Instead of closing the arm’s length between him and Des, he sat on her bed.  He removed a glove to rub her sheets between his fingers. His left glove, Des noted. His hand’s skin was strikingly pale. “Damn posh up here. They spoil you.”

Des folded her arms over her chest. “You don’t. You haven’t made me an offer yet.”

Force lolled back on the bed. He slapped the spare glove against his thigh, idly. “Gastown barters me up. I earn it. Anything I’m in the mood for, it’s mine.” He stretched, showing off his whole limbs and his unweathered gear, gleaming black and steel.

Des gave him a tight smile. “Save it for a feral. 'Oh, you’re all on your own, poor little rat. I’ve got all the barter.' What next? Are you going to offer to protect me?” She tiptoed closer as she spoke. After his taunting and jealousy, he was there, on his own, showing off for her. He had succumbed. She did her best to brush her smile away and make her voice flat and hard. "Gastown mask. I don't even know if you're a full-life under all that."

"My mate was clean enough for you – and when I step out, I only do what keeps me clean." Force let the glove go to reach up under her wraps, sliding up her thigh, to grab the tuft of hair at her delta. The slick brush of leather, there, heated her. "If I strip down and show clean, you up for some playtime? That is, if you’ve got what it takes to get me off.”

Des spread her legs. “You’ve seen what I’ve got. All this, and a little of your mate, too, after last night.”

Force made one of his noises. “You aren’t stupid. Brute’s everything I need. Except for one thing. Sometimes.” He drew back his hand, resting it almost on her knee. His dire eye lowered as he bowed his head. “I want more than a simple screw. Something…interesting. I want to be understood.”

Des exhaled lightly instead of laughing, doubly exuberant. It was often the toughest ones, exhausted by their constant posturing, who cracked like this. “I can do that.”

“You think so.” His hand stabbed up again, the grip seizing her inner thigh hard enough to bruise. She’d seen this before, too, the anger after that cracking. All typical for the sphincter of a crew, like Force.

Des twisted herself away and draped herself beside him on the bed. “Did you hear a word from me about your crew? Their twists? No. Buy me and I stay bought.” She snaked on top of him, stroking her breasts against his leather chest piece. The hot smell of her flesh rose up, ripe and crude after last night. “What’s your offer?”

Force jacked his forearms beneath her ribs, bare hand and gloved one resting over her breasts. “Leather or steel. One piece of my gear. Your pick.”

“I’ll have steel …” She laid her lips over the mask covering his mouth and pressed down. “If you’re clean.” Des made this breathy with persuasive promise.  

Force extended his arms, pressing her away. The lift felt effortless. For an instant, she was flying above him. “Citadel full-life! I’ll show you clean.” Then he was out from under her, and she was rolled, dizzy, onto her back. In the seconds it took her to shake her head and roll further up to sitting, Force had placed himself in front of the door. He was reaching behind his skull, undoing the mask.

Des remembered what Rabbit had implied. “You handsome under there?”

Force laughed richly. “Close your eyes, beautiful.” For an instant, she lowered her lids, letting her hair fall before her face, then slit her eyes half-open. She glimpsed baldness.

“No.”

He was a burn victim.

Des had expected something of the kind. The extent of it shocked. The firestrike had gnarled three-quarters of his skull’s dome, reduced his right ear to a crimson hole. His right eye had been cooked opaque, pale as quartz. There were deep slashing scars along the right side of his jaw where burn-scar tissue had been freed with some knife. Not on the left: his left eye and ear were entirely spared. His mouth and chin, too, were nearly untouched, his fullish mouth only slightly distorted on the right by the scarring’s pull.  

“Fire burns clean. You asked for clean. Not pretty.”

This was the height of Wasteland survival. Beneath Force's ruined skin, his bones were balanced, clean with muscle. Horrified, yet intrigued, Des leaned towards him. Her heart thrummed like a Wasteland chase. “How? Were you a Polecat too?”

The burned flesh, reddish to nearly brown, was terrible enough that it was nearly a second mask, save for Force's mobile sneer. “I wasn’t _a_ Polecat. I was _the_ Polecat. Brute and I were the first pair.”

Force drew his right glove off. That hand, too, was gnarled and crimson.

“I was always Gastown, always a looker and a fighter. I could claim anyone I wanted. When I saw Brute fight, I wanted him. He was smart, back then. The only reason the Refinery let him do war was he was so damn big, the warlord put pressure on them. Refinery types stick together. I had to chase him hard. I got my man, like I always do. Together, we had anyone we wanted, too.” Des thought of the steel in Brute’s hair. The two must have been together for thousands of days.

Force was undoing his jacket-chestpiece. This was taking some time, salvaged zips and snaps popping one by one. Black curiosity had her as he reeled out out the story that had been his life. Lovers told each other these stories about themselves, again and again. With Brute, Force had every bond but that of memory.  Des stayed where she was, witnessing.

“I liked running the pipes, climbing. Did some of the dancing they do based on that, to keep Brute keen. One time, I told him I got impatient fighting on the road. I wanted to just throw myself in there. Brute listened. He did this thing with tech and vectors and his refinery mates. They spent a night with a bunch of spare drill piping and I don’t know what all. Then they got me in there. They were going to put me on a stick on a truck and spin me around? I laughed. But when they strapped me in the rig...I could feel the potential. I fell off, they changed it, tried it with weapons, we did it again. The next night, they had the balance right. I had the feel of it. I was still laughing. A different laugh.”

“That was nothing to the first time we took the Polecat rig out. You could hear the Buzzards howl to the horizon. A man on a stick! Wiggling around! Then I zapped in there with a chainsaw, zinged their chieftan’s head off. I was flying and I was muscle and I was death. By the time we got back to Gastown half the fighters in the place wanted to be a man on a stick.”

The Polecats, Triumverate terrors on a par with mad War Boys, had come about as a tribute of love? It took a lot to stun Des. This did.

Force’s arm and chest armour clunked down at last. Again, his right arm was terrible, healed skin stretched and puckered, torn. He must have worked it into painful motion constantly as he healed.

“Gastown built it into strategy fast. I trained, Bruce refined the Polecat rigging –“

Des said, “Hold on a minute. Bruce?”

“He used to be Bruce. Refinery people still have Before-time names. Big blokes like him, with a head on their shoulders, they’re the counterweights, they send and spin you. Cats on the pole, we’re the weapon they deploy. For eighteen Amnesties it was my life. Flying and death.” She remembered how Force had lifted her high: that instant of flight.

Force skinned off the age-grey fabric that shielded his torso. Stripes of scarring flared down from his shoulders. The fire had left him with one nipple, on the same side as his good eye.

“Then this filthy road war –"

“The Fury Road?” Force was bending to undo his boots. Des couldn’t take her eyes away from the striping burns that fed below his belt.

Force said, sarcastically, “Believe it or not there have been other road wars. This one nearly fried your precious Imperator, two Amnesties back. It definitely fried me. Our vehicle got rammed with another one. I got hit by one of our own flamethrowers, both vehicles flipped.” He closed his good eye and shook his head. “I was nuked.”

He dropped one boot. “Our flesh mechanic was having a sober day when they hauled me in. So, I’m here.”

“Compared to me, Brute looked fine. Until someone realized he hadn’t talked for three days. The day count went up. Figure his brain was broken in the crash. Ninety percent of the time, his mind, his memory, it’s gone. Something’s always wrong with him. He’s grown even more, he’s in pain. Acromegaly, the flesh mechanic called it. He’ll die before I will.”

 “Why don’t you kill him?” It was what Des would have wanted, if it was her.

Force’s mouth boiled into a snarl. He slammed his second boot down. “He’s my mate, damn it. He gave me everything I ever wanted. I look after him now because that’s the deal. He's not what he was. I'm not either. I give him what’s best for him. He knows it’s me.” The snarl tilted upwards. “We still screw. He still makes me come.”

Force opened his lower leathers. There was more grey fabric, tight over the last tongues of scarring, but below that, Force’s legs were clean.

“No surprise there. He’s awesome,” said Des, defiantly.

“Sometimes I get a night on my own, like this. To exercise my…intellectual side.”

Force turned away to peel down the last grey fabric. Claws of flame had claimed the right side of his back. He was showing off the best part of him, a narrow lower back and high, indented ass, both pure muscle, close to immaculate.

Des held her breath, anticipating his final turn, and cursed. “Fukushima.”

A dappled tongue of burn scarring dipped over his crotch.  It was nearly flat. One pendulous testicle remained, a grotesque elongation of the damaged zone.

Force reached over and pulled her to standing, drew her to him at last. The touch that had lured her in, the hard core of him, was, awfully, the same. “Think you have what it takes, sweet meat?” he said. His deep, shifting voice and that one blue eye were also unchanged. Both the live eye and the dead one pierced her. Des felt his chest scars, hot and leathery, under her right hand. Her hand was luminous, perfect, compared to his scarred flesh.

Lured into this deal as she was, fool as she’d been, she was determined to come out of it better than him. “You tell me. There’s only one way I can think of,” Des said. She raised two fingers into his line of sight, pairing them for a wicked thrust.

Force’s snarl curled again. Des noted that his strong chin had a dimple. Before the fire took him, he must have been a looker. “You aren’t wrong. But first I like to get inspired. Off with this.” He plucked at her cottons. “Spare me the show. I’ve seen it.” Des squirmed out of the fabric, missing its heavy purity as it fell. Force didn’t even watch. He was bent over to fossick amongst his gear. Des stopped breathing until his hand bypassed a knife hilt at the top of the pile, burrowing instead into a pocket or pouch. She caught the flash of something silver.

“Remember I said I liked bondage?” As she shuddered, inhaling, the silver Force held flashed in the air. Des recognised it from the Citadel’s forbidden gambling circles. She’d wagered herself, once or twice, but not for that stake: a guzzoline token.

She frowned. “Those tokens, they’re no good here.”

“They trained you up Citadel, all right. Primitive, and not primitive enough,” Force said, enigmatically. “Play you a game. Flip to see who ties up who. I toss the token. The Gastown drill rig comes up, you tie me. See if you can get a gusher. The wrong side, I’ll see what I can get out of you.” His even-toothed smile glinted. The token spun in his fingers. “Deal?”

Everything possible was wrong. You didn’t gamble with Gastown, you didn’t deal with madmen, and a whore never, ever, ever got bound, whatever the offer was (and there had been offers). Yet this was Citadel, where all the Wasteland’s rules for weakness were broken.

Des sneered. “Proves you’re a tosser. Go on, throw.” Force flipped the disk high and neat, caught its shimmering turn, and smacked the token into his clean arm. They both looked.

It was the drill rig.

“Well,” said Force. “Well, well, well.” He lay down with a second ostentatious stretch, grasping the steel bars of her bed head. “Going to tie me up all pretty like your wraps?”

Des had better than that. From a bundle of hoarded fabric, she pulled out two pieces of cotton rope. Each was less than a meter. She didn’t need more. It wasn’t like she wanted him to move.

To tie him, she snaked her body over him again, let her breasts dangle in his face. He laughed in his throat and bit her hard enough to leave bruises tomorrow. Des set her teeth. She had a reason for this. As she finished the knots, her arm dropped low, fingers brushing Force’s gear. Briefly, she read what her fingers found, and took her hand back.

Des sat up, straddling his waist. His body was harder than Koch’s, his broader shoulders more appealing beneath the rubbery gravel of his skin. Force lifted his head to get a glimpse of her exposed cunt. “Not bad for a breeder bitch. If you were a feral –“

Des cut him off. “Not this again. You’re here with me!” Des’ rage flared further as his shift rocked her back over his loins. There was a ridge to him, somewhere inside, hardening.

“I’m paying you. You’ll listen to me talk about slicing new orificies in you, if that’s what I want.” He shifted his narrow hips beneath her. “If you were a feral, Joe-damn, I’d make you run. A couple of us used to pick off spare Wretched, y’know.” He smiled up at her.  “Back in the Triumverate days. You could always pick one or two up on the way out of the Citadel. Quim, usually, trying to be lucky as you. Smart enough to figure being a Wretch was a loser’s game. We’d chat ‘em up, let them think what they wanted, then, halfway home – where the Wasteland’s a no-man’s land - throw ‘em down and tell them the hunt is on.”

Des remembered her first few hours at the base of the Citadel, the warning from the old History Woman. “You hunted Wretched.” Eyes deliberately wide, head tilted listening, she lowered herself.

Force expanded. “We were sporting. Kept to about 20 kay speed. You should’ve seen when we caught them. You think you give it up? I don’t know what was better, when they kept up the fight, or they tried to surrender, made their own offers…” All his concentration was on pulsing his hips into hers and his obscene internal vision. The sphincter wasn’t paying attention to her trailing hand, lacing off the bed on his blind side. Des closed her fingers and brought up her prize: steel for her offer, that knife of his.

She was low enough that Force was breathing in her ear. She reminded herself she didn’t believe in the Wretched’s superstitions, not even the tale of White Eye. He bucked up against her wriggling movements. “Thought you were the type to get off on a killing tale.”

Des was next to his earhole. “I am,” she whispered back. “But the kills are mine.”

Force turned his head to her, directly into her knife-weighted fist backhanding his scarred cheek.

She reared over him like a serpent. “You lay a hand on any of us and I’ll call my mob on you. I’m still a Mongrel. We’ll shred you.”

Force arced up against her hard, his one eye alight, grin strangely clean. “You were Wretched? Damn, you cleaned up.”

“Nothing could clean you up, filth. Not even that fire!” Des smacked back the other way.

In his strength, Force barely blinked. “Pretty when you’re angry. What’d I do to get you so mad?”

“Filth like you screwed over the Wasteland. You rode rough on the side with the cars and guzz and bullets. If it wasn’t for you, getting between me and a clean deal, I would’ve – " Des had enough pride to swallow her words. Wasteland men had eroded her trust away long ago. At the Citadel, she’d been trapped Wretched for years, wary of the Treadmill because of Gastown’s twisted sport, worn away as she’d endured the hard dry life. She spoke to both as she cried, “I lived through hell on earth because of you.”

Force gestured with his chin down his body. “Triumverate screwed me over, too.”

Des left the knife on his throat. “You want to be done, leave off the feral filth. Give over to me or pay in blood.”

“Now you’re getting good,” Force said. “Tell me all about it, feral bitch. Tell it right and you might not have to fist me.”

“Not a feral bitch. I’m death.” She traced the knife down to the clean part of his waist, over his guts. “I press down, you’ll die dirty. Stay still and…” Her free, left hand slid down her own body, teasing wetness out of her reviving cunt, slicking her fingers. “Want to taste your mate in there?”

Force’s entire body jerked. “YES.”

Des split his suddenly nerveless legs apart with her knee. “Then earn it.” And she penetrated him.

She’d driven the dirt road before, a failsafe to get a man off, however tired or underhydrated. It never felt right to her. Settlement memory tainted it as sin. Resorting to it was a failure. With Force, there was nothing else left. What was wrong about it was how wrong it didn’t feel. His ass opened easily, the blind ring of muscle yielding to flesh as strange as his scars. The idea of Brute using him, on the regular by the sound of it, made Des’ pulse flash. Her arm’s thrusts resonated inside her sore hips.

By the time Force was canting his hips into her thrust, Des had most of her fingers inside him. She was upright, but curled tight and low, and she shifted the knife to a spot that was her old friend: where a man's hip met the leg, where blood coiled near the surface. Her fingers inside Force’s intestines found his man’s hot spot, and she hammered the knot of flesh. “Do I cut you?” she snarled, thinking aloud. “Get some blood for that?”

With a feral howl, Force’s whole body jerked, crushing her hand, and he came. It was beyond obscene to see his ruin of a scrotum contract, white streaks spurting from the merest slit up his belly’s scar line. It would haunt her nightmares, yet she couldn’t look away. The ghastly, mysterious life of it gave her an idea.

Des flipped the knife into her dirty hand. With a clean hand free, she wiped the semen up. A quick jam inside her, and Force’s potential was hers. She knew he had smarts, was an athlete, a lover and a warrior. A user, a destroyer, a Wasteland power. A child from all that, with the Citadel to grow in…

Force was watching. “Gonna put that where the sun don’t shine?”

That decided her. Des slapped him across the face, tracing his filth back across him.

“Classy.” Force winced as his good eye was stung.

Des weighed his chest with her body and hissed, smacking the knife against his throat again. “They say you should be good to a dying man.”

Force turned his head right as she pressed the point where his neck throbbed. “Lay off, breeder, I’m done.”

“I’m not. After what you said, Citadel law's on my side.” She wriggled the tip of the knife.

"Bloody Wretch. We had a deal!" Force spat.

Des said, "You'll see how the Wretched live when the Imperator sends your corpse to our maggot farms. Give me one good reason I don’t cut your throat."

Force sneered. “Brute. Told you I look after him.”

“So would I. Better than you, with a whole Citadel of sisters backing me. Snap my fingers, flash my tits – Brute’s mine. If you’re gone.” Des pressed harder.

Force’s fire-melted nostrils flared. He choked out, “Filth. I don’t believe you.”

“I killed my child to get up here. That’s nothing, to killing you.”

She saw him slammed by it, afraid of her at last. It was as sweet and terrible as the moment the Treadmill guard seized her arm after she’d cast her baby away. She coiled her arm, raising her armed hand high, and saw his horror. She brought the knife down on his left side, his eye side, let him see her stab -

-  the mattress beside him.

They stayed locked in that moment for one terrible breath.

"We had a deal," she repeated.

She lowered her face to hiss, “Look after him like you said. Or else –“

Des spat at him. The gobbet landed close enough to his eye for him to flinch again.

She smiled in satisfaction. “Now you’re done.”

Des jerked the knife free and hacked briefly at the cotton bindings. “You do the rest.” She sprung away, back to where she’d started, by the plant and the window.

It took Force a few moments to work himself loose. When he sat up, he said, in his pleasantest tone, “Glad you were interesting, after all.” Leisurely, he dressed again, re-encasing himself in leather. “Picked your barter there?”

Des realized he meant the knife. It seemed unreal that he was biding by the deal, leaving her armed and standing. Yet she felt the weight of it herself, the only law of the Wasteland, not traitoring someone dealing with you. She thought of the two times a Mongrel blood fight had gone to a draw. When both fighters survived, they acted like friends. Des had always found this borderline insane. But here it was: here they were. Force went on. “Say you’ve got Brute’s pup. You gonna kill this one?”

Was that why he wasn’t shredding her? “I’ll kill everyone else first,” she said.

“Then I’ll give you a bonus. To keep you clean and alive.”

Force began to sort out his boots. “Not all the quim here’s as picky as you. Gastown’s finest bait’s with us. Silence. Pretty as sin. Used to belong to the People Eater. A sick, sick man, the People Eater was. We’ve got a betting pool on when his former cum rag goes down to the Rot or the clap. He’s been spending his nights with one of your Citadel sisters. Only gal in your pipefitters, mask and tool belt.”

Des felt her expression warp. “But – she – "

“Tell me about it. He’d never have gotten near a respectable type like that in Gastown.” Force sealed his mask around his skull. His grin vanished, leaving only his cold, amused left eye. “Watch your back. Start your own betting pool. Or maybe try that knife. Certain things, you don’t want them spreading around.”

Desperate finally remembered the nothing-looking Gastown mask from the first night. Not big enough to impress her…meant he might not scare off Rabbit. After she’d encouraged Rabbit about Gastown men.

At least she was free to move. With the knife’s pommel, Des smashed the plant's skull pot. It shattered forwards. The first thing to fall from it was a pistol, a precious loan from Smith. Des dropped the knife to hold it with both hands. “Get out. GET OUT.”

Force threw the knife’s sheath on her bed. “Keep the change.” With that, he left.

The second he was gone, Des flung herself to lock her door, for the good it would do, and dug out a spar of metal from a corner. She dropped this into two crude metal brackets, a bar against it being opened in the night. The chips and scratches around this were fresh, new. Playing nice with the sister of a Milking Mother leader also had its advantages.

Her room was a wreck. The metal bed frame had a serious cant. The bed head’s bars were warped where Force had gripped them, releasing himself. On the floor, fabric was wrinkled, stamped on, the valuable knife buried beneath potshards and scattered dirt. She brushed the knife clean, then sheathed it. She tucked it into the first wrap that she tied around her body.

The main potshard, half of the front of the pot, had rolled and looked up at her. Its blunt skull face in pinkish clay was, disturbingly, between Force and an infant. Des lifted the broken face and started to scoop scattered dirt, shards, and plant tendrils into it.

Amongst the clay shards, something glinted silver. Force had left his guzzoline token behind. Des picked it up, rubbing her thumb over the oil well stamped on one side, and turned it.

An oil well was stamped on the other side, too.

He had rigged their game to lose.

Wastelanders had a thousand kinks. Force could have asked her straight for a beatdown. He hadn’t. She knew why. He was such scoured ground, such wasteland himself, that only a storm of real fear and hatred could rouse him. And she’d let him goad her into a killing fury, drawing out what she’d hidden. Traitoring herself.

She sank to her knees.

Des hadn’t wept for half her life. It wasn’t weeping, these huge, rasping breaths.

The breaths resolved into words. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t sure who she was saying it to. But, somehow, it had to be said.


	24. A failure to communicate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Silence thinks he's staking a claim - but Rabbit sees it as a choice. Note: Naked people discussing sex, branding, and ethics. Is this genfic? I don't even know any more. Send help.

Rabbit awoke with a start. The lanterns – she’d forgotten to blow them out. One was still alight, if guttering. She inhaled in alarm. The triple scents of guzzoline, lubricant, and sex brought everything back to her.

The successful well drilling combined with the vision: deep assurance that life, real Before-time life, was still possible. That the new World was coming: was already on her way, as the History Woman had forseen. And the Citadel might last long enough to see it. The future was going to happen. Amazing.

More pleasure than she’d ever imagined, searing her like lightning in a storm. And the man who had given it to her, Silence, curved around her in a tight embrace. At the very end, she’d given in to herself, let him risk breeding her up. He had cut the risk and pleasure short to stay within what she’d asked. Then, he’d let her rattle on about the vision, holding her until she felt calm and sane again. She really could trust him. Astonishing.

Feeling Rabbit move, Silence reached down and tilted up her chin. She almost gasped at his pale smile and silver-grey eyes, wild with smudged kohl. To her gaze, he was the irrepressible life and beauty of the World, made flesh. He gave her cleft lip a little pat and reached for the slate and chalk.

Rabbit took the chance to sit up and try and untangle her hair. Surreptitiously, she wiped her mouth (had she been salivating on his shoulder? oh, no). Her insides felt…not wrong, but rearranged…and her incipient headache had returned. She was definitely back in the grounded awkwardness of real life. Until Silence flourished the slate in front of her with words she’d never dreamed of reading.

_i want you for mine_

Rabbit dropped the slate, trembling, terrified, thrilled. She covered her mouth by reflex. “You can’t. I. I’m ugly. I’m not good at this.“

_not about good_

_about need_

She was terrified again, because he was right. She needed him, yearned for what he did. And something in the depth of it was wrong. Occam's razor flashed in her heart. Surely it was that she was Wretched yet, afflicted, more than undesirable - not even supposed to desire. “I shouldn’t. But I do.”

Her transgression was rewarded with another caress, and more on the slate:

_i’ll train you_

_brand you here  
_

Rabbit gasped in shock. At the Citadel, owner's brands were as dead as the Immortan - and as taboo as fond memories of him. Silence folded a hand around her right hip and clenched hard, face alight, jerking her to turn towards him. As he nearly bruised her, she hissed in pain. Her cleft-lipped snarl tightened. He didn't flinch, drawing close to roll his mouth against hers, clumsily, for him. He didn't care how feral she had been, how broken she was. The more she gave in to him, the more he wanted her back. Rabbit leaned to meet him. Then, they were consuming each other, mouths hot and wet. Silence pinned her down on the sliding cushions. He was half-hard again, grinding against her. His hand still gripped her bones like her own yearning. Rabbit could have sworn he mouthed the word _mine_ into her lips. Her hip hit the concrete base of the bed platform.

The jolt gave her a moment. She dared to confess, in the scantest whisper, “I always wanted a brand.” From the edges of the Wretched, a brand had looked like value. Like belonging.

Silence laughed in his disturbing way, from his throat, and dove for the slate. Sitting up, he started to write, then erased it. Rabbit went breathless. She was seized, for an instant, by another Wretched memory: what it was to see a carnivore's hunger flash in human eyes. After a tense moment, he gave her the slate again.

_give you two – mine and gtown_

Rabbit blinked. “Wait. What?”

_mine = going with me to gtown_

The lurking wrongness focused with a stab. Rabbit cried, “I can’t leave!”

Silence grabbed her chin and jerked her face up to him. His own face was between angry and beseeching. When a moment of his regard didn’t change her mind, he wrote:

_said it yourself - just here_

_no brand no deal_

Rabbit gasped, “There’s Spark and my work and – and the History, he’s getting so old, and – and all the others, and also – I can’t leave!”

Silence let her go and scrawled, furiously.

_they call you tunnel rat, cannibal, ugly wretch_

_staying for that?  
_

_I can be hard…_

Rabbit shook her head. She wouldn’t shame herself by telling him how much worse the insults had been among the Wretched. “There’s more than that. I meant to tell you. I could show you. It’s been so busy, I haven’t taken you to the gardens, nothing like that. Couldn’t _you_ stay?” She ventured a shaky caress of her own.

In the dimness, he went paler.

_no breaking indenture NONE_

_names nothing to what they’d do_

She curled away from him, sitting up, and plunged her face in her hands. The horror of parting and denying vied with the terror of leaving, risking being outcast again. Gastown felt like the same excluded nowhere as the Wretched ground, as anywhere not-Citadel. Trying to collect herself back to sense, with short, despairing breaths, she heard the chalk scratch. The slate eased into her line of vision.

_two brands = owned & citizen = protected_

_have you every night_

To be wanted like never before, at such a price, broke her into tears. Silence responded by sliding his hands onto her again, turning to bite the back of her neck. She shivered against his claiming touch, glancing back at him. His outraged beauty struck her.  
Surely he had never known what it was to starve, to be so thirsty you were half-mad. “There’s another thing. Hardly anyone knows. I'll tell you because I - I'll tell you.” Her tears blinded her, throat trying to swell shut around her secret. She shook her head to clear it.

"Listen. Please. Like before," she pleaded. This got through to him. He settled beside her, alert, still somehow off-kilter.

If she made this a little Tell, she might make it through without crying. “This is my history. It's important. Living Wretched with my cleft palate, I’d get sick, in my throat and ears. I’d be in pain.” Silence scowled and stroked his own throat. Him, too? Of course. They'd cut out his tongue. Rabbit swallowed. “I realized one day the pain wasn’t always sickness. It came before the toxic storms. It warned me. I could find the best place to hide and live through it. But…I wasn’t anybody. Only the History People listened to me. They had a wordburger for it: _storm migraines._ Then I came up into the Citadel. They listen. Corpus did, first, and he tells the others. Now more of them live through it, too. And it makes a difference for our gardens.”

Silence’s eyes went wide, dilated black. He backed off. His scrawl was demented.

_using your body - no terms_

_they own you_

_i can get you OUT_

Shocked anew, she began, “But we aren't things! I want to help! I want to! You…” Silence seized her again, this time by the wrists, his teeth clenched. Again, he was hurting her - but he smelled of fear. The calmness of survival took her, as it had amongst the Wretched, or in dicey moments on Citadel climbs. She tried, “It’s good. I promise. The Citadel, they let me up. That means it’s my home. It’s bigger than any deal."

Silence snapped his hands away. He reared to standing, scattering cushions, and started to drag on his clothes. He mislaced the top of one boot and had to redo it. Rabbit had time to say more, but she was at her limit. It wasn't him, it was everything, and there was so much. Everything was risky, fragile, complex. Her soul’s mother had died to give the new world a chance. The Citadel needed to stand as strong as it could to reach out to the place of that vision and, somehow, start the world anew. She’d seen what four hours warning before a storm could protect. She couldn’t take that away, at the same time abandoning her vulnerable Citadel pup, and know she was living the right way. Not for a passion that was tearing her soul in two. Not even for love. Her tongue was thick in her mouth, her voice muted with the hot flow of her crying. She knew she was at her most revolting when she cried.

Silence gave her one last bare-faced look, cold and perfect, then strapped on his mask. When he was shielded, a young shadow of the Treadmill guards, he snapped his fingers and pointed at the floor beside his feet. His hand was shaking.

Curled sitting on the edge of the platform, naked and stained, Rabbit swayed forwards. She shook her tangled head. Her lisp, never thicker, rang in her own ears. “Not like thith. I can’th like thith. And I lothe you.”

Silence was deathly still for a long moment. He stalked back, jerked open the door. His last gesture was to fling the slate he’d borrowed at the wall. Then, he was gone.

Rabbit pulled herself to her feet as the last kerosene jar gave out. Leaving her wretched in the darkness, shattered as if she’d killed the world.


	25. Everything but the girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Silence comes to grips with his failure - and the alternatives. Desperate brings it to farewell the Gastown crew. And the elements of the Citadel become both friend and foe. Notes: A gen chapter, by the standards of this story.

All this time in the Citadel, at night, Silence had barely been where he was supposed to be. The space that billeted the guards was a claustrophobic afterthought beside the spacious Gastown suite. Silence had found it tolerable. Its total lack of privacy warded off harassment. Also, Brute could barely move in there. Still, outside the door, he paused.

Beneath his mask, Silence shifted his jaw. That second mouth-numbing round of shine was wearing off. He scarcely remembered his wracked, furious walk back up here. The full-body throb starting to take him had the deep, sickening feel of a chrome comedown. It was easier to think about that than to shake off his haunting last glimpse of Rabbit, after she'd refused to be _his_. In the near-dark of her room, she had been a wavering shadow, clinging to the vaster, darker shadows around her - those of the Citadel. He fought nausea and opened the door.

The space was unusually peaceful. A warm light was on. (Why did they have electricity, and Rabbit didn't?) Koch’s bunk was empty. Brute was hunched on the edge of another bunk. Force, ungloved but masked, was quietly shaving Brute’s chin.  Mangler watched, half-draped over the ledge of his own bunk. Seeing Silence, Mangler grinned. “Look what the Buzzards dragged in.”

“Shhhh,” Force hissed. “Schlang me up while I’m doing this and you get the razor next.” He murmured this, but something about it sent Mangler into retreat.

There was a quiet moment. Silence watched as Force made sure his mate would be comfortable under his respirator mask tomorrow. Force’s hands ran the steel over Brute’s face, unerringly, each stroke followed by a lingering, smoothing touch. Brute rested slack and trusting before him. Watching them, Silence roiled with anger and aches he couldn’t name. 

Finally, Force clicked the razor against the water container and thumbed the last crude soap off Brute’s chin. To Brute, he said, “You’re good. Unlike every other sphincter in this place.”

Mangler leapt up. “Did the top bitches want you to breed them up, Si? You their new stud?”

Silence made an obscene gesture. Rabbit’s staggering refusal had him in such a state that he had forgotten his long visit with the Sisters.

Force’s single eye glinted. “Hit up your own breeder instead?”

Silence glared through his mask.

“Standing more like the Sisters used you for their new whipping boy. I should thank them for warming you up.” Force stood in front of Silence, slightly taller, twice his width. He traced the straight razor down the right side of Silence’s mask. It was far too easy for Silence to force himself cold and empty to endure it. Force nearly whispered, “That quim you set us up with. Did you know her name’s Death?”

Silence nodded, carefully. He had always known what was beneath Force’s own mask. Yesterday, he’d realized why he’d turned down a month’s worth of offers to accept Force, then set himself to undo Rabbit with such determination. 

Force felt his paired intrigue and misery. “If it wasn’t for your contract, I’d shred you. By the time I was done, you’d be like me.” He tapped the razor over Silence's right eye and murmured, “You don’t need a pretty face for our deal tomorrow. Just your right arm.” Not true, Silence thought: he'd need both hands to remove Force's mask. His fingers flexed.

They both jumped at Mangler’s voice. “You fellas gonna do it right now? That’s hot. I’d watch that.”

Force lifted the razor and snarled at Mangler. “Do you mind, rustbucket?”

“Nope! Go right ahead! I can hold onto your big boy for you.” Mangler leaned over and reached for Brute’s chain.

Force shifted in an instant to sucker-punch Mangler’s shoulder joint. “Ow!”

Force snatched up Brute’s chain himself and stood to block Brute from further taunting. “This Joe-damn rat cage of a place. I’m so done.” He turned back to Silence. “You're trashed. I can smell the 'shine on you through a respirator. Did you know you have a bunk? Crazy, right? Hit it, now. I want you sober, with your bait face on, for the run back. The rest: tomorrow.” With one hand, Force snapped the razor shut.

Silence was billeted above Mangler. That irrepressible bastard, still laughing, thumped the bottom of the bunk with his foot. “Awesome run here. You should go in on a whore with me when we’re back in civilization. I’ll go first so you can -” Silence blocked out the rest, realizing, for the first time, what Mangler might have said if he'd shown up with Rabbit in tow.

Force growled, “Mangler, shut it. If I’m not asleep in ten minutes, somebody’s getting mulched.”

Force had a point. Silence hadn’t felt this much of a rusted wreck since the night the Outcrier had blackmailed him. As the others settled, Silence undid his mask. His right hand's scent brought everything back to him. Rabbit had wanted him to have her. She'd melted in his arms at the thought. Then it had all crashed. Worse, she'd confirmed what he'd suspected all along - that being used by the Citadel seemed better to her than Gastown filth like him. Or was it? What had Rabbit said, at the end? Did she love him or loathe him? His mind wouldn't stop racing. Until it did, and the next thing he knew, he was getting shaken awake. “Time to move it out, pretty boy. Get your war paint on.”

Silence had managed the night badly enough that he had a hangover. Eating was out of the question. He sculled a liter of Citadel water. Preparing to be bait again was a backsliding nightmare. The dark, hour-long trip across the Towers was one long torment, carrying the maps Rabbit had traced in every line, surrounded by the stones she read like wordburgers. He felt the Sisters' letter in his jacket's deepest pocket sixteen times, wondering how he could barter their request up on his own behalf. His chance to move up in Gastown felt more and more fragile the further from Rabbit he went. 

As they went, Silence found his usual edgy, bitter self settling around him again. He understood the strangeness of Rabbit’s Citadel life, now. Corpus placing her in his personal, guarded space by day, near the treasure of the Wellhead by night, with passes and tools and irresistible duties, warning Silence to keep his hands off. It was all Corpus’ way of guarding his living storm warning, when he couldn’t lock her in a Vault any more. You couldn't own a human being, here. But Force was right to call the place a rat cage. He'd seen rats flee back to their enclosure when threatened. Schlang the whole damn lot of them, here, twisting Rabbit around to make her cling to the prison she knew. 

At last, they hit the Treadmill Bay. Amidst the clang of machinery and the hard stares of War Boys, Silence edged closer to the quartet of guards around the Worksman. Last time he'd been here, hunting the People Eater's killer with Rabbit, the noise and tough men had made her shy. She had asked him to protect her. He thought back on his intoxicated offer to Rabbit and winced. Protect her, compared to all this? He hadn’t even made it clear that he would feed her. Besides, a small, gentle woman wouldn't dare walk around Gastown, branded or not, the way Rabbit did here with her worker’s pass: called a name or three but unmolested in any serious way. He would have had to cage her more than this place did.

Their departure from the War Tower was delayed. First the drivers, then the Worksman himself went to dicker with the winchman. Silence caught the Worksman saying, “We have been perfectly on schedule. It has been ideal. I see no need to deviate for this indefinite warning when you can’t scientifically verify…”

The delay gave somebody enough time to come see them off. With the Worksman away, one of the drivers dared to howl, “Breeder! Incoming!” Silence whirled around, thinking for an instant that Rabbit had changed her mind and chased them down. But, as always, hope was a mistake. It was the whore who had done the rounds of the guards, the one with the tough name, Death. This was the third time Silence had seen her. A guard a night had suited her. Wrapped in immaculate cream cotton, she held her shoulders back proudly, green eyes shining, vivid and fervid. Strutting alone, she was the Citadel's contained freedom in the flesh.  A low, dark car skimmed off the Treadmill. She stood her ground rather than get out of its way.

"If it ain't Mrs. Walker! Hoo hoo! Over here!" Mangler shouted.

“Mangler. You’re a bad boy!” She dragged him into a half-nelson and rubbed a fist against his head, both of them laughing.

“Yes’m!” Mangler agreed. Then, he barked like a dog.

She released him after a final rub and looked up at the next man. “Koch, you’re all right. Go where you have to…”

Koch kept it elevated by taking her hand and wringing it.

She turned a beseeching whore’s look up at Brute and wriggled next to him. “You, you’re a good boy. Yes you are!” She petted Brute’s chest roughly as he leaned over her, then reached up and gave him a messy, lingering kiss. 

Brute broke his quiet to rumble, “You gonna have a baby?”

“Yeah,” she said, with a sly grin. “I’m pretty sure.”

Behind his double mask, Silence curled his lip, amused, pleased with himself for recovering enough to be amused. Was she staring at him, for a moment there?

Finally, she rounded on Force, raising her voice. “As for you, sphincter. Feral hunter! You show your face in my Citadel again, we’ll have that fight we discussed. You, me, and the Mongrels.”

Force snarled, “It’s a date.”

Death put her hands on her hips. “I bet you crawl onto the next Rig run to make it, too. Try it! I can’t wait for the chance to tear your heart out.”

Force stepped up to growl in her face. “Unless I see you first. In hell!” 

“Oh no you don’t. You’re still under orders. Look after that mate of yours.”

Force leaned back. “Like you’ll get your hands on him again. He’s a piece of me. If you didn’t have a piece of him yourself, I’d…”

They exchanged a burning stare that ended with a shared, hard nod. Then the woman left, all flying hair and flouncing cotton. The four guards’ gazes were stuck on her.  Mangler called, “See you around, Death! At least one more time!”

Force snapped fingers next to Silence’s ear. “Show’s over. Jerk off later or save it for your bait face. Which I want to see ready, the minute we hit the ground.” Beside him, Force dropped his voice. “This delay’s good for one thing. Finally scored some chrome. You know what that means.”

Silence did. Their session would be on. He eyed Force coldly, weighing the first and fiercest Polecat as a cut-throat ally against Gastown. Unmasking Force could sate his own hungers. More, Force wasn't the type to say _don't hurt me_ as part of a deal. Even as he felt that in his grasp, it went dead. With Force, he would always have to deal, and deal again. Force would never help Silence as selflessly as he helped Brute - the way Rabbit had helped him, asking nothing in return. He turned away. 

Mangler, too, had an eye for Force. He jeered, “Got a new mate there! Make it a threesome. She can be in charge of the both of you!”

Brute rumbled in denial. “Not mate. Breeder.”

Force said, “That’s no breeder, that’s death. A filthy feral killer –"

Mangler laughed.  “Sounds like you offended someone. She’s a settlement girl, gotta break them in!”

“No, he’s right. Those Wasteland types will stab you in the back,” said Koch.

 _Love or loathe,_ Silence thought. Not a lot of difference. Especially with a Wretch who’d tear your heart out. And he roiled anew. Death was a rough cut of a woman, Force was cruelly twisted, Mangler a pervert. But the trio had given him what his life hadn’t.

He understood what Rabbit really was, now. She was a piece of him, torn away. Rabbit had to have felt it, too, the way she'd been with him. In Gastown, someone like that was your mate. He hadn’t known, until too late, how to say it. Again, he flashed with anger. How had he been supposed to know? In Gastown, mates were for…he glanced quickly at Brute and Force, Stephenson and Delany. People who had say in their own lives. Rabbit, unsigned and unbranded, had claimed that say herself in her dealings with him.  _Don't hurt me. Don't breed me. Let me have my life._  As if he had the power to spare her - like this Citadel did, be it cage or shelter.

_Bet you crawl onto the next Rig run…_

That would have been a way to have Rabbit. Negotiator status would give him the leverage to make Mangler's perverse vision of mateship, occasional but intense, come about. Now that Silence was thinking again, he knew he'd never had a Citadel deal go straight, save with the Sisters. It had always been re-negotiated, cut around, compromised but still a gain. He even had a choice of how to quash any Citadel resistance. Deal with ally-hungry Corpus, or call in his one outstanding “Citadel thing” with the History Man. Perhaps both, playing one off against the other. All the pieces came together. He could have been soothed and strengthened by Rabbit: she could have had her life here. Too late. 

For now, his thoughts were useless. He was here as flesh to be used. Silence unmasked, stripped his upper half, became bait to tempt the jaws of the Wasteland. If anyone in the bay was watching, he was beyond caring. He squinted against wind-borne sand hitting his face, and took his place in the vehicle between the sedate Worksman and overheated Force.

The jolt when the Treadmill landed weighed his bones. They rolled off with a grind of gears. Silence stared past Force at the once-Wretched ground. This was where Rabbit had eaten clay, talked to stones, half-buried herself against storms. She had come away from that terrible life full of knowing and visions, saying that everything had a soul. 

Without her, nothing did.

Silence was flung forwards when the vehicle skidded to a stop. A Polecat fell off their front grid. Everyone else was braced. He hadn’t been paying attention. An amplified woman’s voice was screaming at them, ringing from the Citadel's tannoy to echo from the stone. “STORM INCOMING! Convoy, turn back! Ground dwellers, get safe and give sanctuary! All vehicles to the Treadmill immediately! STORM INCOMING – storm CONFIRMED.” They hadn’t even cleared the towers. The sunlight remained fierce. The only sign this wasn't overcaution was a rising wind, driving a rain of sand against the side of the vehicles.

Force watched the outside Polecats adjusting their masks and exchanged a look with the driver. He shoved Silence out of the way to tap the Worksman. “This is gonna hold us up here an entire day. Need to keep you and the drill rig secure, sir.”

The old man humphed, irritably. “I accede. Only because it's another sign of Council infrastructure concern.” There were other reasons to agree. Silence had seen the grumbling compliance of Gastown's inhabitants during safety drills. There was no sign of that here. The woman on the tannoy was repeating herself. Ground dwellers were sweeping everything inside as if there was no tomorrow. 

As the transport churned back around, Silence levered himself back into place. An entire day, a second chance. That Wasteland chill touched him at the uncanniness of it all. In short order, they were back on the Treadmill, swaying on its strange weightlessness again. This was what it was, to be _let up_ and to feel its potential. Because there was no way he’d let Desperate and Force, a whore and one of Gastown’s vilest sphincters, outnegotiate him. Once, he'd been obsessed with finding Max, the road warrior who'd killed the People Eater. Now, this gripped him. He and Rabbit weren’t done -

The moment the Treadmill touched home, the wind rose to a wail. Ruddy clouds billowed high. A first crack of lightning blazed, turning the stone around into the vastest, darkest shadows. The tannoy screamed, "Storm lockdown NOW!"

\- if he could get back to her across the guarded towers of the Citadel.


	26. The storm wife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A callow young Polecat, trapped on the Citadel ground as the storm comes down, finds shelter with a voluptuous charmer. Good thing he doesn't believe in ghosts. "Don’t you know that nothing you do in a storm counts, as long as you survive it? Traitor your mates, kill your brother, lie down with anyone…"  
> Notes: Smut chapter! Het sex with a dose of the supernatural.

Guzz-go-down, he was stupid. Eager to get back to Gastown, he’d been riding on the grill of the front vehicle instead of on his righteous pole. It was one of the ways young Polecats like him got away with murder. But when the top Citadel bitch started screaming over their tannoy, amid stops and turns, he’d fallen off. By the time he’d figured out what was going on, and which vehicle was where, it was too late. Every set of Gastown wheels had crammed back on the Treadmill at once. He was left on the ground at the bottom of the Citadel - with a storm coming down.

Fukushima!

All around him the ferals who lived on the ground were slamming shutters, dragging pot plants inside, herding children. Dust devils were kicking up on the pathways. Three Rock Riders screamed past him on their bikes to bang on the door of one of the huts: it opened. He turned and looked back from where they’d come, and close to kacked his daks.

A vast wall of red dust had risen on the eastern horizon, and its herald was a howling wind.

Rustbuckets! Filth forever! The People Eater’s right foot!

A figure came running out of the storm’s heart. The storm was playing with lines of sight – she seemed far, then she was close. Then, right next to him. She was a young woman, heavily curved, draped in white, eyes still wide amidst the blowing sand.

“Citadel! You got a way up?”

The young woman grabbed his hand. “Storm Law. Anyone who has shelter, gives it. Come with me.” Dead with relief, he raced with her. 

She didn’t go to the Treadmill drop. Instead they came to one of the Citadel’s base cliffs, the stone fractured with a few fissures. He was enthused when she slipped inside a cavelet. A secret way in? That was something to tell the Gastown boys later.

No, just a cave. They could only go about four meters inside. The space was about wide enough for two people to lie down together. The woman's voice was soft against the rising howl of the wind. “Do you have any light?”

He beamed. “I’m from Gastown, I gotcher guzz,” he said, flicking on his pride and joy, a gas lighter. She gasped and held out her hands towards it, laughing. “Careful. It’s hot.” Like you, he wanted to add. She was more beautiful than the breeder who’d come to say goodbye to the elite guards. ‘Course those top dogs would find a way to a breeder even in the new Citadel. But they were making do with that one, shrill and skinny. The woman with him was the real deal, full and lush, dimpled arms and softly meeting breasts and shining black hair blending into the shadows. The light caught an earring she wore, a gleaming amber drop.

She was looking around, and when he followed her eyes, there was something to see. The walls had words and phrases and images chipped and chalked into the stone.

“What’s with these walls in here?”

“The History People lived here for a while. They won the rights to it in a dice game. The pair of them rolled the bones one night against Meltdown of the Lepers. They say a lucky wind blew the dice the old woman’s way, for the final throw.” She smiled, mischeviously, his Gastown flame dancing in her eyes.

“You. Uh. You a Sister? Upstairs?”

“No. I’m down here, now. They’ve made it all right, up there. I’m glad.” She tucked her legs under her neatly and knelt down. Her hips plumped and spread over her heels. He swallowed and hunkered down himself.

“I gotta turn this off,” he said. He’d already burned his thumb to keep her smiling. When the lighter flicked out, the strange red storm light took over. They both became silhouettes. He took his mask off to shake the sand out.

Her voice was deep enough to purr. “You’re from Gastown. What are you doing here? They never stay.”

He spread his legs and got comfortable. “We were keeping an equipment run safe. The stuff, the people. ‘Mportant enough to have us on this stupid short run. A Joe-damn eighth of a day! We get here and they stuck us in the War Tower. Everyone kept saying it’s not like it used to be. Swapped sucking pipes with a War Boy, bunch of Treadmill Rats let me hang around while they told weird stories.” While he talked, she leaned closer, to hear him over the storm.

 When she spoke again, her mouth was next to his ear. Her breath tickled him. “What kind of stories? I like stories.”

“Ghosts and curses and the Immortan and the Before-Time. I dunno which was less real.”

"Did you believe them?"

He snorted. "Y'only see ghosts if you go crazy. When you stay too long in the wastes and get feral in the head."

She didn't seem to care one way or the other. Instead, lashes lowered, she asked, “Did they tell you the one about the Immortan’s wife who walked off into the storm? A storm like this one.”

“No. Why’d she do that for? Didn’t she get the aqua-cola an’ the good stuff?”

His eyes had adjusted to the dimness. The woman pulled her long, blunt-trimmed hair over one shoulder, toying with it. “The Immortan used to throw the Wives out if they hadn’t had a son worth keeping after three pregnancies. He’d throw them down to the Wretched, when the Wretched were hungry brutes. This one got lucky. There was a storm coming in. Simply off the Treadmill, into the storm…did you believe in the ghosts and curses?” She was smiling as if she knew a secret, scrutinizing the ends of her hair.

“Not those or the Before-time ones. Anyway the night after the stories, I got lockdown for getting caught in a pipe-climbing competition. Joe-damn enforcers. I was winning, too. So my last night was rust. Get me back to Gastown.” At least he could collect some guzz tokens when they got back. The bait looked miserable, like he was coming down with everything at once, exactly as he’d bet.

“Maybe he’s in love.”

Had he said that aloud, about the bait? He hadn’t meant to. “What even is love?”

The breeder’s laugh echoed. “I don’t know, myself. I had a husband. But I hated him. I was just a thing to him. He wasn’t any prize himself, old, sick. You aren’t.” Her arm brushed against him in the near-dark. He had no words for how good her skin felt.  It got better when her hand took his upper arm, tracing the swells of his muscles. “I’ll be your storm wife.”

He went hot, though he said, cautiously, “This isn’t that Wretched married thing, is it?”

She purred again, in her throaty way. “Nothing like that. Don’t you know that nothing you do in a storm counts, as long as you survive it? Traitor your mates, kill your brother, lie down with anyone…” She slid her hand down the divide of his vest. “You’re young and strong. You’re not afraid of me?”

It was his turn to laugh. “I’m afraid of nothing. It’s your lucky day. I’m a Polecat. We’re the hottest screws in Gastown. This whole dirty Wasteland wants to get drilled by one of us.”

Her reply was to pull a pin amidst the fabric twined around her throat. All her white wraps fell away at once.

She was left kneeling nude in the reddish half-light. He lit the lighter again, and her flesh gleamed. Her body arced into an hourglass, big breasts rising to him, flawless to his eyes. Lower down, her navel winked from a fold of plump health. She spread her thighs. Her body was hope and glory and every dream of a breeder a Wastelander could have. Next to her he was hard, rough, wire and grease. He seized her.

In his arms, she cried out and twisted. He grabbed her wrists: somehow, she slipped free. Anyway, it turned out she wasn’t trying to get away. She was pulling him in closer, with her luscious strength, and he couldn’t say who was devouring who. He bit her silky, giving throat. She drew his vest away, let it fall. This meant she could attack him and give in to him at the same time, rending his back with fine-tipped fingernails while her breasts and belly spread tender against his tough chest. Ravaging need blinded him into a knot of blood and muscle. He jerked his daks open. “I’ll take you, breeder, gonna drill you so hard – “

She swayed back, poured herself over the sand, opening her legs. He was on her, in her, and her voluptuousness sealed around him. Beneath him, she billowed and arced like the sand clouds. Her deep muscles were the strongest of all, her deep flesh the softest. Again her nails ran down him. He felt her hands clenching hard into the muscles of his ass, drawing him down again and again. He shot into her, feeling himself thrust. His own raw noises were lost against her singing howl and the height of the storm.

He didn’t withdraw to clamp a hand on one of her breasts, digging his fingers in. “You liked it,” he said, entirely smug. She only sighed, once more with her low, precious engine purr. Her sweat and the cave’s dust cooled on her skin, leaving her velvety. Her hands drifted over his shoulders, clung to the exposed skin around his neck, stroking. He was still panting when she pressed her thumbs on him, closing his larynx. His mind sank eagerly into dark dizziness, hard and proud for another round.

This time, she did more than make noise. “More. More! Give me your seed, give me back life…” She was tight and feverish, as if her insides had truly thirsted for his jism.

“Fukushima, giving it to you, gonna touch the sun –“

It felt like he did.

This time, he sank beside her, so drained it was hard to tell what was red storm-light and what was the blood-dark dimness of him closing his eyes. He buried his face in the absolute darkness of her hair, and listened to his heartbeat diminish. The last thing he caught was her murmur, a fragment of that weird old ghost story again. “Three times, then the Wasteland…”

When some brightness penetrated his eyes, the cavelet was still and solitary. The storm’s howl was gone. The reddish dimness was lifting. He jerked up. Joe-damn it. He always was one for passing out. She’d probably left, all pissed off like breeders got. Then he saw what she’d left behind. Footprints.

He sprang up and followed them out until someone brushed sand across them, right in front of him. He snarled and curled a fist, but the someone, old and weatherbeaten, flinched. A second old person appeared, frowning. He remembered what the main crew boss Torcher had said: lay off and be generous, none of them are your slaves, here. 

He plastered a dealsharp’s smile on his face. “Hey. I’m looking for a breeder. A woman. Dressed like a Sister. All white? You see which way she went?” He proffered a guzz token. “I met her in the storm.” The oldsters exchanged a terrified glance and shook their heads.

He heard one of them ask the other, “Are you going to tell him?”

“And be cursed myself? Nuh-uh.”

These ones were worse than the ones upstairs, real ferals. “You mind if I wait here for her?”

“No. You want water?” He agreed and held out the guzz token again, but they still wouldn’t take it. Instead they watched him drink from an old tin can. He wiped his mouth and looked around again.

One of the oldsters leaned over as if he was an apparition who might become solid, one of the ghosts from the Rats' stories. “Feel better, maybe?”

“Yeah. Think I’ll go look for her proper.” He settled his mask and goggles back in place, flexed his arms. What was it she’d said? He settled on that she’d promised him a third time.

The oldsters exchanged another look and went inside their hut and shut the door again. Their fear didn’t touch him. ‘Course they were scared of a Polecat.

He glanced down. Her footprints started up again. They were heading away from the Citadel, out where the storm had begun and dust devils still skirled. It only took him a moment to get his mask and goggles where they belonged.

He followed.


	27. The uplifted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trapped in the War Tower during the storm, Desperate seeks backup from the Treadmill guard who plucked her out of the Wretched masses.  
> Notes: Not a smut chapter but the next thing to it.

Desperate was appalled.

She was trying to get back to the Green Tower after her Gastown farewell. At the main War Tower swing bridge crossing, two War Girl guards were treating her with the respect due a Milking Mother. “We’re on storm lockdown, Mother. It’ll hit any time, now. I can’t let anyone cross, not even the Imperator.”

She was about to be trapped in the War Tower.

“Even the Gastown crew’s turned back from their drive and come up.”

She was about to be trapped in the War Tower with Force.

“The Galleria’s nearby and the crafters are good folk. You can look at their works while you wait.” The skinnier War Girl dared to put a hand between Des’ shoulder blades, turning her towards the Galleria’s corridor.

Good wasn’t what Desperate needed. Her preening in the Treadmill Bay had her running on fumes. She needed backup. She could embarrass herself by asking these guards, or she could turn to her old reliables. She half-ran, first the way they’d pressed her, and then down. In her white fabric, she felt like a beacon, a target. Workshops, the mess hall, she passed them both, though the storm had packed them with loiterers. She could hear roistering from the supply depot two levels below. The War Tower’s toughs gathered there, including feral recruits like Battler.  None of these were her destination. She was tracing back to the Treadmill Bay itself.

It was nearly empty of people. Most vehicles had been rolled back into workshops. Sand was raining inside the bay’s mouth. The wind was moaning, rising to a scream. At the Citadel, the narrow canyons between the towers gave the storm’s howl an uncanny, human note. The Treadmill Rats were gone, packing the mess hall, their great works locked into place. Soon she was on the mezzanine that wrapped around the space, giving access to the higher level of the works. She had a free path to an airy cavelet carved out by past stonecutter slaves.

Desperate peered in. They were both there. “Dexter. Sevens.”

The two chief Treadmill guards looked at her, startled. Dexter was sitting on the floor, looking into the Treadmill Bay, leaning his thick-shouldered back against a wall. He pulled his hood off his seamed, graying face. His jaw was clear: the tumors lumping his thyroid hadn’t taken it yet. Sevens was peering out the cave’s view slot, his handsome face entirely blacked, his heavy gauntlets removed. Sevens turned and said, “Aw, hey, Tits. ‘Sup? Come to see your crew?” Des didn’t consider any man her crew. She didn’t correct him.

Dexter rumbled, “Knocked up yet?”

“If I’m not, might be done with it. Tried some Gastown guards. Pissed one of them off. The storm turned them back and I’m stuck with you lot.” The men laughed. “Let me hang here and I’ll make it worth your while.”

Dexter said, “I’m draggin’ today.  I could watch.” He lifted his brows at Des and Sevens. Despite his smile, his eyes were shadowed. His whitefella's hide had a grey undertone.

Sevens replied, cheerfully, “One of those Gastown pipesuckers started chasing me the minute he got on the Treadmill. Now I know how they get the oil out, there. I’m ruined for life.”

“Live and die and live again,” said Dexter. He lifted an arm, invitingly. “You can still hang. Owe you for the first time I screwed you.”

He always said that. Desperate tucked herself under his arm. His familiar smell enveloped her. After the Gastown men, he was earthy, pungent.   

Sevens had a considering eye on the Treadmill Bay. “That Gastown crew’s going to be bored. I’ll go see what they can get out of my tank.” He left, casting back his easy smile.

Dexter shook his head. “Kids today. They go with anyone. Women, men, anything in between. I’m old. I like what I like.” His heavy hand swung down to one of her breasts. Des arched to make this easier for him.

“You remember when I came up,” Des said.

“Joe-damn yeah. Had you right over there.” Dexter pointed at the rough bench where Sevens had knelt to look out. It would have been a two-fingered gesture if he wasn’t missing a middle finger.

Des punched him in the arm. “Bastard.”

Dexter grinned. He was only missing two teeth. “Oi! Hadda make sure you were a milker for real. Got a mouthful for me today?”

Des drew down her wrap on one side, the side unbruised by Force’s biting, and straddled him. He was so gentle on her breast, she barely felt him, until his suck went hard enough to tug her nipple out.

“You’re dry.”

Des opened her eyes. “I wasn’t four days ago. Maybe I am pregnant this time.” She slid off him and rearranged her wraps. “You would’ve bred me up months ago if you hadn’t fought in the Hot Zone so long.”

His arm settled around her shoulder. “I had a good run. Rode out of Perth with ol’ Joe. Helped him take the Citadel.” He held up his truncated hand. “One of his right-hand men while he was alive.”

"The right Treadmill guard. Taking first pick for the Immortan!”

“Fuck, yeah. It was worth losing the finger.” Dexter, laughing now, had been one of Colonel Joe Moore’s most faithful followers. A few of these survived. They had stepped back from fighting to go grey in Citadel sinecures, been quartermasters, garden supervisors, Treadmill guards. When Furiosa and the Sisters took the place, with  the choice of honoring Joe’s memory in Wasteland exile, or the Citadel itself, they had all found themselves faithful to the Citadel. This Treadmill guard now told everyone he'd led the way on the day of the Revolution. He was one of the pair who had, after a baseline challenge, gone along to Let Them Up.

Dexter's laugh turned into a cough. “I got to help, you know? I got to get people out of it. Just wish they’d listened to the rules more.“

“You followed your rules better people wouldn’t have tried. And wound up dead when you stomped them down. ‘Ooooh, that random clinger’s got nuts, I’ll let them up.’ ‘That one has a dimple!’ Someone fell off, you guards would add their skull to the Treadmill Bay metalworks.”

“I respected ‘em for trying. They knew what was good.”

This repeated conversation was as comfortable as the man’s heavy flesh. But Des took it further today. “It made us all crazy, down there with the Wretched.”

Dexter shrugged this off. “This new crew an' their big ideas seem pretty crazy too. I dunno if you’re all out of it now, or all in it. I’ll be out of it soon enough.”

He was also the one who’d judged her the day she'd offered herself to the Citadel at the Treadmill, proffering her infant first. The child had survived a month alive; she had been hard put to it during that time. After everything she'd done, he'd rejected her son. (The moment he did, she did, too. Desperate knew what she’d done when she slung the infant to those two sly girls beside her. She’d caught the look they exchanged. They were about to feast.) But when she'd cast the infant aside, he’d accepted her, made her dream come true, put her in the center of the Treadmill and let her up, her alone that day. She had felt giddy and empty. There had been plenty of time in the dizzy air for him to lour, demand to see her tits again, say he’d examine her more, to be sure. It was his responsibility. When the platform clanged home, it had been his pleasure…

To this day, she couldn’t say if she’d wanted it with him then, or not.

Yet she’d come back to him when the revolution settled. He was big and strong and he’d flown her away from being Wretched, even when he’d witnessed her primal crime. In his arms, she wasn’t lying about her life, who she was, nothing was her fault. It was still worth it, what she’d done.

And now?

Dexter tweaked a lock of her hair. She looked up at him. “Whenever I went with you…it was like the Citadel itself was taking me.”

He patted her on the head with a big hand. “You always talked nice. Gonna miss me a little?”

She let the weight of the touch bow her head. “It won’t be the same.”

Des had been the one who’d noticed his first lump, on his nutsack. He hadn’t done anything until nodules appeared in his neck, too. The healers hadn’t surprised anyone. They’d poked and probed and told Dexter he was a marked man. Someday, when the lumps met in the core of his body, he’d keel over on the Treadmill. Then, the healers could park him on the balcony the former slaves had carved out near the Infirmary. He could pet plants and babies and watch the sun set and get stoned off a Vuvalini concoction until he decided to stop eating or drinking.  Or, a good friend could slit his throat. Des knew him well enough to know that he’d picked Sevens for the blade. Was Sevens Dexter's son? She thought they didn't even know themselves. In the old Citadel, there had only been one father named: the Immortan.

The Immortan was dead. This man was dying. Those fighters she’d bedded, each of them in their own way had been broken. They’d been high-flying, they’d been muscle, they’d been death. Sooner or later, they would fall. They wouldn’t leave peace. Not in this Wasteland.

But they would leave a space. 

Des slid his hand off her head and looked up at him. She poked his side. “When you’ve got the knife planned. Call me. I’ll come.”

“Said you wouldn’t, last time.”

“I can change my mind. This is Citadel. Maybe I’ll be the next Treadmill guard.”

“Haw!”

His laugh made her want to say it again, louder. She stood up, balling her fists. “Why not? I know the Wretched. The upstairs, too. I know what it’s like, out there. What it is to be…desperate.” Des picked up Dexter's sign of office, his great scythe. It wasn’t as heavy as she’d expected.

Dexter growled, “That’s too big for you, little mother. Put ‘er down. You don’t even remember what they were for, Before-time.” 

These stabs always came. This was sharper than usual as he guarded his sinecure. This time, she felt herself a match for him. She'd survived Force. And Dexter's familiar touch reminded her she knew the Citadel’s secrets, and then some.

The Citadel’s tannoy came to life. “Thank you Citadel! No deaths from this storm! Storm Law holds. Here is your Storm Law reminder. No Treadmill drops until sundown. Don't go between towers unless it's very necessary. Travel ban and sanctuary until dawn tomorrow.  Learning groups are cancelled until tomorrow. Extra liter of water for…”

Des leaned the scythe back against the wall.

Seeing her leaving it, Dexter patted the ground next to him again. “Good girl. Stick around, if you want. They’ll give you a hard time before they let you over.”

Des stayed standing. “I need to get back. There’s someone I should to talk to.”

“One of the Mothers?”

Des thought about Rabbit, who had done Des’ deal – and a deal of her own. Who hadn’t come to the Treadmill to see her own screw away. Who had been born unlucky. Force's thoughts and her own overlapped in Rabbit's shadow: how was she, Wretched as could be, even alive? She palmed the weight of Force’s knife on her hip. “A sister.”

Dexter chuckled richly. “Tell the pretty lady I say hi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Verse note: See the Sisters and Corpus visit the canon-based Galleria and its Wretched artisans in [this short piece of mine.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4591761/chapters/12279449/edit)
> 
> Anyone remember the [Mad Max kink promptatorium? ](https://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/) There was a prompt ages ago about Desperate and the Treadmill guard who seemed very enthused about taking her up. It was lurking in my mind around this.
> 
> 1000+ hits for a story based on the Fury Road movie _outtakes_. You all are amazing, thank you!


	28. Two out of three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Silence deals, sneaks, and prevaricates his way through the Citadel. Only to run into the man who killed the People Eater - Max!  
> Notes: Genfic chapter.

The easygoing Citadel sprang into military law when the storm came down. Gastown’s main crew were billeted in the War Tower, locked down in a grim barracks. The Worksman and drillers were whisked off to pleasanter quarters, along with their guards. Silence was left where he would have been if he hadn’t become Office Boy for a few days: with the main Gastown crew.

Torcher, the Gastown captain, took one look at him and shook her head. “Like I don't have enough problems already. Don't you start. Watch your bait back and use your weapons.” She gestured him inside the barracks. They were a warren of bunks, some carved from stone, others dragged in from some broken-down military camp. Silence was hard pressed to find a spot worth defending. There was one exit, but ample dark corners for fights, encounters, rapes. You’d think the Immortan had wanted his men to consume each other.

Silence did what he thought Rabbit might have, staying masked in the shadows. There was plenty to watch. He could tell what kind of night it was going to be. Torcher did the rounds, getting angrier as she went. It seemed a novice Polecat had gone AWOL. The crew's mercenaries were whetting themselves for a manhunt. Silence considered what they'd do if Gastown's bait went missing - and how he could work around it. Meanwhile, War Boys and repair men were circling around, coming in, leaving, half-starting fights or having low conversations with the fresh Gastown meat. All of them seeking to ward off the storm, the wind crying out for their Citadel blood. 

Silence seized his chance when it came. The crew were herded out for a scratched-together meal in the mess hall. Brute and Force and the drillers were there, and he knew the drillers could read. Silence slipped over to the drillers' table and used his last stump of chalk to deal with them. After five minutes, and surrendering his butyl nitrate (the rarest thing he had on him) he’d drawn Delaney back to Force. Force, politely masked, was making sure Brute ate relatively neatly. Seeing Delaney, he asked, “What’s up, sir?”

Delany coughed. “Message from this one. He’s holding you to an earlier deal since you’re still at the Citadel and he’s done one night’s hall roster. Claims he should be free tonight, too, and you should back that up with Torcher.”

Force was respectful to the driller. “I see. Thank you. You can leave us to it.”

Silence waited.

Force drummed his fingers on the table. Silence expected to be excoriated for a good five minutes, but Force emerged from his brooding with a nasty laugh. “You’ve got me deal-snared. Fine, you syphilitic prolapse case. Fine. You’re useless here. Go walkabout. Kiss your worker quim goodbye, if you can find her. But good luck getting out of this Tower. You’ll suck so much pipe trying, you’ll get lockjaw. No busting your half of the deal. You’re here at dawn, with a decent bait face on, or I’ll strip you and chain you across the transport hood. That’ll get the Buzzards going.”

As always, Force had a point. But Silence remembered the paths he’d walked with Rabbit, the first time they met. It would take him to pipes that sucked, all right. He wasn’t looking forwards to them. 

Silence hadn’t made friends in the War Tower on his last Citadel visit. He traversed the place shadow by shadow, his rebar nightstick at the ready. As he went, he strove to retrace the way Rabbit had taken him months ago: on the day they’d sought the feral who’d killed the People Eater. Silence had wanted to see the man who'd set him free from five years of horror, and rumor had it he was at the Citadel. But all they'd found was his name: Max. 

When Silence hit a space where several tunnels merged, he turned into the narrowest, darkest one. Yes, this was it. There was more than one way to cross between Citadel towers, and more needed to cross than people and produce. Aqua-cola did, too. This was the path to …

...the ghastly pipe bridge. Here, broad pipes, irregularly reinforced, spanned the gap between the towers. With a hundred and fifty meter drop below, the pipes weren't half wide enough.

The half-hidden door to the pipe bridge turned out to not be locked. Silence had to throw his shoulder against it to bash it open. Sticking his head out made him feel sick in new and different ways. Confronting the Citadel height alone made it worse than he remembered. And this time, a wind was blowing, shrill between the towers.  The end of the stay rope for walkers streamed from the edge of the door for three meters: the other side of the rope was lost, broken. If the Wasteland ever wanted to take him, this was its chance.

Silence oozed out into a clinging crawl across the widest pipe. It took half an eternity. He flattened twice against rising gales that rattled the works. When his fingers sank into the grid base halfway across, he was sick with relief. Only at the end did he realize that this door, too, might be locked. He had to stand to wrest at it. Nerves gave him muscle. He managed to force it open and stagger in, his entire front marked red with dust, as if he’d embraced the Wasteland.

Slinking through the Siege Tower’s dark passage tunnel was nothing. By time he got to the Green Tower crossing, he felt confident enough to try his final gambit: taking out his letter from the Sisters and making out that he’d been summoned to return to them. It was less of a lie than a lot of what he’d allowed. Rabbit, like the Sisters, had sworn by the History Woman.

Silence unmasked, shook the sealed document out, and approached the crossing’s guard with his most enticing smile. Either the smile or the Sisters’ four seals on the letter worked. This crossing was an enclosed shuttle. “Gonna be here a while. Need at least one other to run the shuttle.” Silence settled in, replacing his mask.

Silence proceeded to sit there for a disturbing amount of time. Alone, in rare peace, he was able to think. It wasn’t encouraging. The difficulty of what he was trying to do increased the closer he got to Rabbit. He wasn’t sure how much she’d understood, last night, nor how much he’d imagined. He parsed out an offer to her several times, weighing how to get enough out of it for himself. For in this world, everything had a cost. It was easy to forget that inside this Citadel, with Rabbit. Last night, having her in his arms had been like...a drug? Shine? Aqua-cola? The last, he thought. The Citadel claimed to give their aqua-cola away, now - but after a taste, you were trapped dealing with them.

None of this mattered if Rabbit had been trying to say she loathed him, at the last. More, Force’s sneers made him realize that he’d be running a gauntlet back in Gastown. If the Jade agreed to the Sisters’ terms, the moment the word went out Silence was their Citadel negotiator, he was at risk. He expected to ward off at least one attempt to kill him. Darkness seemed to come early.

What happened next was even more disturbing. Silence heard a voice he knew: the distinct cadence of a Vuvalini. The last thing he wanted was one of those canny old women getting a glimpse of him again, masked or not, when he had his own business. He ducked down below the shuttle windows. It didn’t sound like she’d seen him. “Thanks again, Max. We know it’s hard. You saved a life today. Go rest up. Tell Furiosa she should, too.”

“Mph.”

Silence’s old obsession seized him. _Max_ was out there. The man who’d killed the People Eater. Who'd eluded Silence, until this moment.

The shuttle doors opened. Max entered.

This was the hero of the Fury Road? He was a quintessential dirty scav, colour and personality faded out of him by the Wasteland. To Silence's eyes, Max was middle-aged with middling whitefella’s skin, not a body modification in sight. Petroleum slaves had better haircuts. If he wasn’t growing his beard out, his scruff was tragic. His full mouth and blocky shoulders might have had promise if he wasn’t unhealthy with exhaustion. Silence recalled his own experience with plain men's prowess and Max’s destination, then revised his opinion. He was probably the Imperator’s prize stud.

Silence was furious all over again. This time, it was at the History Man, blocking his claim for three Citadel slaves two oldmonths back. He’d have claimed the Gastown runaway Ballard, on the down low in their electronics shop, purely for the man’s Gastown ransom. If the Citadel gave Ballard to him, that worked around his earlier deal with Ballard. Silence had thought to try Rabbit as a concubine, and he’d been more right about that than he'd ever imagined. But he'd wanted Max the most of all. He'd only started to ask for the man when History shut him down. Max, he would have kept as his personal guard. Doubtless he’d been right about that, too. There was no way to have that now. 

Unless, Silence realized, he turned the tables.

He couldn’t own Max. But Max had killed the People Eater. The People Eater had owned Silence. A quirk of Citadel culture that had impinged on Gastown law at times came to mind: that, if you killed someone at the Citadel, their belongings were yours. Silence could claim that _Max now owned him._

Silence weighed Max. He was sitting cautiously at the other end of the shuttle, by its exit. Max's face was bare, and when he glanced at Silence, once only, he had an actual expression. This man was as weary and ruthless as any survivor. But there was someone human behind the muscle and grime. That was rare enough, outside this Citadel, to explain why he was spoken of as an improbable myth.

His hint of humanity told Silence that Max wouldn’t reject him. He’d grudge, he’d spin out into anxiety or anger, but he wouldn’t kick Silence away. Silence was confident that, after one night with him, Max would be seduced. More, he knew what it was, now, to have someone really give themselves to you. That owning was being owned in turn. He’d have unmatched protection in the lee of this fierce man. Max sounded like a wanderer, a Wastelander. Scraps of memory beckoned: the convoy, an endless, cageless road. Silence might never have to be in Gastown, or at the Citadel, again.

Rabbit wouldn't leave the Citadel; with his Gastown indenture, the Citadel was no refuge for Silence. If he managed to renegotiate with Rabbit, the price of that was to be bound to both those places, and both their terrible pasts, forever. The gain of it would be the right to slake his soul’s awakened thirsts with Rabbit. Once he was strengthened by that, power was waiting. His hunger for it all was shadowed by the risk, priceless things to protect, a thousand ways to fail.

Which was better?  

Could Max talk, himself? He wasn’t saying a word. If he’d speak, Silence could decide…

The shuttle began to move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Verse notes: a whole lot of _Scav Hunt_ follow on here.
> 
> Also, this story has been updating 3 times a week. I'm slowing down over the next two weeks for some positive personal stuff - check out my tumblr, thebyrchentwigges.tumblr,com, if you're curious. Expect another update this Friday, then one to two updates weekly to bring it to a close.


	29. Writing on the wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rabbit works a storm day at the Citadel, crossing paths with Corpus and Furiosa. Then, Desperate catches up to her...  
> Notes: Genfic chapter.

After hours of weeping, only one thing was certain for Rabbit: she had a fierce headache.

Her despairing tears about Silence had somehow turned into crying about everything. There was her heartfelt conviction that nobody would ever touch her again. Her fear that Spark would turn away from her as he got older, learning contempt for her cleft mouth. The abiding grief over the History Woman being taken and, later, martyred: her awareness that the History Man, too, would die. The swept-away world the History People spoke of, that they all should have had, instead of the Wasteland. The nearly-lost memory of her mother whispering to her in Citadel darkness, so similar to this room.

Not so similar. Dawn was breaking, reddish-pink light through the ventilation louvers. Rabbit snuffled to clear her head. Giving in to grief like this was another Citadel luxury. If she had wept like that when she’d been Wretched, it would have marked her beyond redemption as weak prey. More than once, on the ground, she had heard an overwhelmed newcomer crying in the night, then someone soft-footing it towards them. Whatever happened next, the result was one less newcomer the next morning. She was heartbroken, but alive for the new day.

Rabbit tore herself away from her nest. She cleaned herself enough for decency and dragged her clothes on. Clicking her half-mask’s fasteners closed, she winced. Recalling Silence undoing her mask made her eyes go hot again. But the red dawn backed up her headache. If she’d stayed for duty and chosen family and fear, she had better go and give Corpus the storm warning. 

Corpus loved being the one to get the storm warnings. Rabbit was feeling unsure – was her headache an extension of her heartache and tears, this time? But Corpus’ science agreed with her. She sat by dully as he set early-rising Pups bringing him a barometer, heaving him up to his lookout, scurrying to the other towers. He was still palpably in pain from fracturing a bone the day before, but he threw himself into the work. 

Low with her own exhaustion and pains, Rabbit watched Corpus. His inventiveness and generosity were always eroded by his affliction and others’ contempt. In this new Citadel, did he grieve in the night for his splendid brother? Perhaps she’d wind up like him, necessary and despised. At least she could walk and look after herself. 

It felt like justice that, after this cruel thought, Rabbit was sent to give the alert to the Sisters. Politics, always politics. And for it, she’d have to witness their perfect faces and clear voices. Still, she ran to the top of the Green Tower. The humid air coming off the garden plants was one of the few things that eased the pain of her storm headaches.

Once there, Rabbit only had to speak to one Sister, sensible Toast. That was enough, in more ways than one. Toast stared at her for a moment too long: almost as if she was trying to see through Rabbit's mask. To Rabbit's relief, she asked nothing. Instead, she told Rabbit to keep the news going, then whirled away, shouting orders. Toast could do ten things at once with a voice that brought the Citadel to heel. 

Once Rabbit had finished the rounds of the Green Tower’s upper areas, the storm was on them. Trapped where she was, Rabbit threw herself in with the Green Thumbs to help. Her hands freed another, stronger pair to go help take the windmills half-down. Rabbit knew how to fill the irrigation pipes with water, an attempt to hold them against the wind with extra weight, and how to turn the vital irrigation valves off afterwards. Amidst the rising, scathing dust, masks and face wraps came out, hand signals took over. For once, Rabbit didn’t stand out.

Everything got tied down in time. Soon, the Green Tower’s crews, Green Thumbs and Mothers and pups and two of the Sisters, packed into the Vault, all of them rough and dusty. The Dag and Cheedo took it in turn to share Tells to ward off the storm. Rabbit found her heart twisted immediately, not by the Sisters or their stories, but by the writing on the Vault’s walls. The crowd and others' glances made her skin crawl. She left.

To let the storm fill her instead, Rabbit perched by one of the archways leading outside. The space was packed with plants dragged to shelter. A few Green Thumbs were clustered there, watching empty racks sway. Tarps covering stationary crops rippled and snapped in the gales. Lightning blazed, again and again, cracking around the tops of the half-disassembled windmills. One of the Green Thumbs murmured a prayer to the Dag. The others joined in. Rabbit stayed silent. Their anxious watching only proved a Wasteland truth, that the more you had, the more you had to lose. She considered the past few days. When lightning hit the grounding rod on a windmill spar, she knew how it felt.

Perhaps for its sharpness, the storm was brief, less than a quarter of the day. When the skies calmed, the work began again. Rabbit was throwing her slight weight behind the final irrigation valve's turning wheel when a pair of hands settled on it. They forced it into the turn she needed with one good push. One of the hands was metal. She looked up, astonished, at Imperator Furiosa.

“Rabbit, right? I remember you from yesterday,” she said.

“Thank you,” Rabbit said, thinking, _politics._

The Imperator surprised her by saying something real. “Only woman on Corpus’ team?”

Rabbit realized the Imperator meant her. She nodded.

Furiosa said, “Don’t let any sphincters give you a rough time. Corpus, History, nobody. They do, speak up. If I’m not around, go to Toast. Any time.”

In Wretched shock, Rabbit bowed her knees. The Imperator inclined her head. There was another one of those overlong moments. Rabbit pointed back at her valve. The Imperator lifted her flesh hand and repeated, “Any time.” Then, she went.

Five days ago, a word like that from Furiosa would have been Valhalla. Today, all it gave Rabbit was a sense that she could go on. That it might be all right, being alive without Silence. Reluctant to lose that feeling, she traced back to the still-open Vault.

Rabbit couldn’t help admiring the dome’s lovely lines. The words whitewashed on the walls glowed in the storm’s settling dimness. They were easier for Rabbit to take in after her own word with Furiosa. WE ARE NOT THINGS. YOU CANNOT OWN A HUMAN BEING. She had been a thing, rejected as a commodity, disowned. Now, she was seen, part of the Citadel. Just when her heart and body were breaking its laws, yearning for Silence and his claim on her. He’d been a clean deal, a wicked friend, a lover as hard as the hand of fate. He hadn’t turned away from her voice or her deformity. He’d wanted to be with her and protect her. She could barely stand to think about the larger mystery she’d glimpsed thanks to him. The Wretched years behind her gave it all an extra ache.

WHERE MUST WE GO? WE WHO WANDER THIS WASTELAND….Darkness beckoned: the History Woman’s old cell. Rabbit slipped in. Finally, she could have the moment she’d longed for days ago, space and quiet to commune with memories of her old friend.

The cell remained a time capsule. The electric lamp, the cot with a mattress, the clean counterpane were as fine as what Des had, luxury again to those lifted up from the Wretched.  Rabbit brushed off her trousers and dared to sit on the cot. It was her second or third time on what Silence would call a good bed. She didn’t think that much of it. And the little cell didn’t have its own door to lock. The Vault had only one door, and none of its inmates could open it.

Rabbit had been there as the History Woman was taken. Surrounded by a ring of children and Rabbit, she had denied the Citadel’s claim on her, though she was as hungry and needy as any of them. Later, Rabbit had read the History Woman’s secret journal of her Vault years. She had wanted to live, and later die, free.

Why, Rabbit wondered, couldn’t it have been both ways, as the Sisters were with the History Man? He came and went, despite the Citadel’s power. Rabbit knew why, even as she had the tired thought. The History Woman, like the Sisters then, had been enslaved. It made Rabbit wanting Silence still - after what had passed between them - even more wrong.

Then it came to her: how to talk to Silence about her Citadel life against her yearning for him. But too late. He was gone.

It struck Rabbit that Silence hadn’t left the Citadel when he’d left her room, though it felt that way.  The convoy would have gone later, this morning.  Maybe they’d made it through the storm, weighted with their equipment. Or maybe not. Particularly with all the lightning.

Rabbit leaned to one side, placing her forehead against the cooling stone wall, and allowed herself to weep a little more. Despite her awful thoughts, something about the space comforted her. She closed her eyes and tried to pin down what it was.

Shortly, she jerked up with a start. Someone in the dim cell was touching her shoulder. Rabbit took in an ideal womanly silhouette. She snapped awake with fear, sure this was one of the Citadel’s ghost wives, until the woman’s hair caught the scant light with a tawny gleam. “Dethperate?”

Des was sitting beside her on the bed. “I couldn’t find you in the women's bunks. You weren’t at breakfast. Then I got stuck in the War Tower the whole storm. You didn’t go to see the Gastown crew off. That bloke Force scare you away?”

Baffled and relieved, Rabbit said, “Yeth? No? He only talked to me onth. Are you okay? Did you go with him?”

Des didn’t answer directly. “What about the skinny one? Silence?”

Rabbit cringed like she’d been caught stealing. “What about him?”

“Force said he was with somebody most nights. With you. Is that right?”

Beyond dissimulation, Rabbit nodded.  

Des cursed, softly, then asked, “Is this because of what I said about Gastown?”

“It helped,” Rabbit admitted. She managed, “He wanted me to go back with him.”

“To Gastown? Why didn’t you?” Des said it like Rabbit should have.

Rabbit’s mouth felt empty. The beauty and devastation of it all was too much for words. 

Des squared her shoulders hard. “Force said that one looks good but he used to be the sex slave to their freak warlord. That he probably has sixteen diseases. Did he barter you up?”

“It wathn’t like that,” Rabbit said.

Desperate shook her head. “I don’t understand you, but I never did. It took the History People for that.”

“I’ve alwayth talked ‘adly –"

“Not like that. I don’t understand you in my head. Not that anybody up here understands me, either. They don’t know how messy it can all get…” Des sounded grim. “Anything feels wrong, it is wrong. None of the wordburger smarts’ll make it right. Pretending it’s not wrong doesn’t work either. I should have known better, last night.”

Rabbit gasped. “You did go with him.”

“At least I got this for my trouble.” Des unsheathed a fine, heavy knife. “By the sounds of it, all you got was the Rot and the clap.”

Rabbit remembered where she’d last seen that knife: in Force’s hand. She stopped breathing.

Des was turning the weapon over in her hand, contemplating its shimmer. “You tried to warn me. You kept asking if I was all right.” She sheathed the blade, crisply. “I should’ve listened. I came to warn you, too. I don’t need to tell you what the Rot is like. You need to get to the Infirmary, fast.”

Rabbit took a deep breath. “ssSilence told me. And he had the kill-or-cure. Like me.”

Des flinched. “Ew, that stuff. You believed him?”

“It leaveth a ssscar. He had it. He told me the truth.”

Des’ profile, perfect to Rabbit’s eyes, caught the light, like the edge of the knife had. “Force did, too, in his rusted wreck way. He said you and I were sisters.”

Rabbit covered her masked lower face with her hand. “That’th…we’re not.”

“This is Citadel. Up here, acting like it makes it that way.” Des paused. “Thanks,” she said, roughly.

Rabbit nodded, remembering the Imperator’s word with her earlier. This was how you were Citadel without a brand. Not through a deal, but through dealings: the small day to day things that power discounted.

Des seemed to be thinking something similar. “Force is such a sphincter. There’s always one in a crew, you know? It never occurs to them that women talk to other women. How was it with yours? If he fessed up, wanted you to go with him, maybe he was all right...”

“Maybe, a little bit.”

Rabbit braced herself against Citadel prying. But Des was Wretched about it, toying with her new knife again. “Sometimes it’s like that, when you’re young. For a while.”

Rabbit held her silence. Eventually, Des said, “I think I’ve run dry. Maybe it means I’m pregnant. I won’t be a Milking Mother for a while.”

Rabbit hadn’t thought of this. “What will you do?"

“I’ve got an idea. But.” Des sighed. “I’ve done some filth. The right Treadmill guard, Dexter, he knows it, too. He saw me throw my child away to get taken up as a Milker. That’s the kind of thing the Council hates. If I’m gone in a hurry, it’s because he rats on me for that and I get the drop. Or whatever they do now.”

“Oh, Deth. They won’th.”

“You can’t say that for certain.”

“Yeth I can.” Rabbit took a breath. “The ccCitadel threw their children away, too. Before.”

Des gave her mouth a twist. “You saw.”

Rabbit turned away to dash at her eyes. “Ith they gith you a rough time, tell me. I’ll ssspeak up.”

“You’re just a tunnel rat. But there's something to that. Remind them we’ve all got blood on our hands.” Rabbit thought of her first, stolen water bottle and didn’t deny it. Des stood up. “For now, how about I get you into the Mothers’ baths again, while I still can?”

This time, Des left her to it. “Use anything you like. I need to catch up with Smith.”

After a scouring shower, and daring to sniff a few unguents, Rabbit indulged in the Wasteland’s greatest luxury. She dipped herself into the soaking tub. The feel of it was chilling and delicious, soothing her skin’s itches and hungers. The water was only a little silty. The new well depth was pure.

Rabbit thought back to the last time she’d cleaned up in here. That felt long ago, for four days. The bath reminded her of her vision at Silence’s hand, of light and water, death and life: its reason to keep the Citadel alive. And then, being alive herself without Silence, it wasn’t all right. It was like her young life as a Wretch after being thrown out of the Citadel. She knew too much, yet again, and she would suffer for it. 

The water was up to Rabbit’s collarbones. One dip took her below it, the surge strange in her ears, soothing her reddened eyes. She emerged to stand, gasping at how cold the water made her, shaking her head to clear her ears. Being flesh in water was nothing like the drifting dream of her vision. But the water itself splashed and shimmered the same. She traced her fingers over the water's surface. She’d go on. The times when her mind was full or busy, the times when she missed Silence body and soul, would wax and wane. It was the burden and strangeness of being alive. 

Afterwards, though her hair dried quickly, Rabbit carried the bath’s deep coolness in her. She struck lucky in Corpus' office. Only two Pups were in the front space, gesturing for quiet while Corpus rested. After leaving her storm notes on the large slate, she felt up to her room again. The narrow, shadowy corridors heading down were another comfort.

The hallway to her door gave her pause. On this storm evening, its lighting had been neglected. One guttering torch burned reddish-gold, bringing the dim storm light into the deep heart of the Citadel.

Something else from the tempest was down there, too. A red-dusted figure was stalking impatiently back and forth, in front of Rabbit’s own door. She didn’t need to see details to recognize that grace and arrogance.

Silence had returned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One update next week if we're lucky thanks to Real Life.


	30. The new deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rabbit weighs a second deal with Silence. Silence has something to claim at last. And it turns out you can’t have a future without some History.  
> Notes: Genfic chapter.

Rabbit froze. Silence returning was last thing she’d expected.

It was so unthinkable that she would have thought he was a ghost lingering after the storm, if not for the scuff of his feet. All his Gastown gear was in place, including his spiked split mask. Red dust warmed the black and grey of his gear, highlighting all his contours. To Rabbit, he looked killingly handsome, if out of place.

As if they’d just met, Rabbit measured her words. “Why are you here?”

Silence held out a hand to her. He cupped a tiny fragment of chalk. With his other hand, he made the writing gesture. He had more to say. But he couldn’t, unless Rabbit gave him some more chalk.

After the way they’d parted, she could say no. She could have the Imperator herself throw him out, go and tell Des about it afterwards. Des would appreciate that story. Others would, too. Citadel women admired a fighting spirit, an angry woman.

But she hadn’t been angry about what had gone between them. She’d been sad.

Her mind flared with memory. The Vuvalini and the Milking Mothers compared to Desperate, the Sisters’ ideals on the walls of the Vault against the hard truths of Wretched life. It all cancelled each other out, save for one thing: her memory of the History Woman's abiding sadness, her conviction that the world could be better. That stories were worth telling. In a flash of inspiration, Rabbit knew how to decide.

She fumbled in her tool belt for a piece of chalk. In the dim hallway, its whiteness gleamed like a star. The first time chalk had landed in Rabbit's fingers, she’d known what to do. She held this chalk in her fingers, listening to it again. Weighing what felt right.

Slowly, Rabbit handed it to Silence.

He snatched it, hungrily, only to pause. Finally, he wrote:

_owe you a slate_

Rabbit shifted on her feet. “Maybe? But…” Her natural response was enough for him to write more.

_last night – love or loathe?_

Her chest burned, like she’d breathed a day’s worth of toxic air at once. “Ith that why you came back? To find out?”

_here either way_

_can’t deal without you_

_new offer:_

_you + I = mates/ you here, me in gtown_

Silence capped this by unmasking. His finely molded mouth was pale and unsmiling. His hair had gone greasy. Smeared, thinned kohl hollowed his eyesockets. In the dim hallway, the pupils of his eyes were wide and dark, matching hers. There was something solid about his expression, even as he deftly half-unbuttoned his shirt and ran a hand down his own throat, offering himself.

Rabbit stepped back, overwhelmed. “Why? Why me? You could have anybody. I’m afflicted. I’m ugly. You said it yourself.” It had been a relief, really, for him to acknowledge it, just like it was now to say it back to him. But Silence shocked her by shaking his head in denial.

_said that’s what they call you_

_you’re not_

_not after what I’ve seen_

He briefly distorted his own mouth, then made a sweeping gesture: like it meant little, or nothing. In response, Rabbit laid it all bare. “Last night, I didn't say enough. My affliction, it’s not only my face. If I get sick, with my cleft palate, it could get into my skull. I could lose my hearing.”

_fine by me_

That made an awful kind of sense. Rabbit couldn’t help a little laugh. “And I was Wretched for so long. I don’t know if I can have children. If they’d look like me. Or, or if the kill-or-cure truly worked. I don’t know how long I’ll live.”

_likely longer than I will  
_

_Sisters thing = gtown enemies_

Rabbit’s eyes widened. “No! I hate politics!”

Silence lit up, delighted. Love or loathe? He knew which it was, now. Shaken, Rabbit angled away, twisting herself smaller. “You haven’t said why…” She kept her eyes down for the brief scrape of the chalk, only turning to look at his writing.

_had enough to know_

_you're the peak  
_

_stronger with you_

As she had last night, Rabbit placed a hand over her heart. She tried to help the people she loved – and here was one of them, saying that she did.

She pointed at her door. “I was thinking. How you and I were behind here, in my room, that’s what you wanted? If I’d gone with you?”

Silence nodded, stern and avid.

The words she’d thought, in the History Woman’s prison, were still with her. “It’s hard to leave that. But…I can’t be only that. There’s too much to do. I won’t feel alive if I don’t do it. And I don’t know how I’d do it if I wasn’t here. I lived outside the Citadel for years, as no one, nothing, a Wretch. It isn’t a life without anywhere to be. No home. But it’s only a part of one if I’m in a place, a way of being, and I can’t leave it.”

Silence looked sick. He wrote:

_a cage_

Rabbit racked her brain. This word had only come her way rarely. “Cages? They’re small. Too small to hold a person.”

Silence was shaking his head. Gone pale and tense, he’d started to write again, hard enough that the chalk snapped on his first word. After a look of pure frustration, he turned to Rabbit. When he put his hands on her shoulders, sliding under her halter’s fabric, his fingertips on her bare skin felt electric. Eyes locked to hers, he backed her against the door, holding her in place with a leg between hers.

He placed a flat hand against her heart – something about her – then smacked the door, hard, grinding his leg against her crotch. Next, he yanked her off the door, swept a hand up the hallway, and made the rolling gesture. Herself, what they were in her room, and the rest of the Citadel: everything else.

It hit her like a storm. Silence was agreeing to her terms. How she needed to be. "You'll still want me if I'm here?"

In response, he touched her again, pulling the edge of her mask, below one of her eyes.

Almost how he’d first touched her, on the opposite side of this door.

Their hands collided as she reached up. He unclicked her mask, letting her draw it down, then knotted a hand in her hair to hold her head for a kiss. His mouth was hot, dry, thirsty. She kissed him back as if she could give him her last drink of aqua-cola that way. They fell back, both against the door, blurring the writing. 

When they broke apart to breathe, Rabbit leaned against him. It felt unbelievable that she’d gone a day without touching him. Without her mask on, she could smell him, too: heavy sweat and leather, a hint of the lubricant that unlocked her. She pleaded, “How? How can it work, if you’re in Gastown and I’m here? I felt wrong, without you. I want what you want.” Her throat was starting to swell again. “But what’s here – what I told you - it’s too much to lose. How can I trust…”

Silence broke away to pick up the chalk and scrawl, angrily:

_I CAME BACK_

He paused and erased this. After a moment, he began:

_you + 1000 days = Gastown’s mine_

She went rapt with curiosity, but he frowned at himself and erased this, too.

_can deal a way  
_

_watch me deal with history_

_he owes_

Before he could write more, Rabbit cried, “The History Man? He’ll help! He always does!”

Silence smiled, all wickedness, and left the writing at that to claim another kiss. By the time this was done, Rabbit had her arms up around his neck. Silence only half-disentangled himself to write:

_where is he?_

With the storm warning going through this tower at dawn, History would have been trapped here for the day and night. “I know! Come on.”

The single men’s barracks were close, only two levels up.  Rabbit looked through its always-open doorway. These barracks, once crammed with the Green Tower's brief-living labourers, took up most of this Citadel floor. They remained a labyrinth of stony shelves, improvised hammocks, and fabric piles, the air heavy with the smell of unwashed men. It was indoors, and safe, and less overcrowded than it had been. There were more torches here now than on Rabbit's floor. Silence, by her side, still gave the space an appalled look.  He reached for the slate at her belt, then paused, surprised it was still there. Rabbit handed it to him. “It didn’t break.”

He flushed slightly as he wrote.

_your room’s better_

_no good not ‘being a slave’ if like this_

“It’th ssstill better than outthide today!” With other people staring at them, Rabbit used her best manners to ask if the History Man was still awake. One of the men said they’d get him. In unspoken agreement, Rabbit and Silence went back to the stairwell to wait.

The History Man emerged tired-eyed and amiable, wrapped in a cotton skirt, with a large old book in his hands. In the torchlight, it was hard to tell where his wrinkles ended and his body-covering wordburger tattoos began. “Hullo, bright eyes. Corpus said he sent you to the Sisters. I figured you’d be enjoying the high life – ”

He paused.

Stared at the pair of them, barely a handspan apart. Rabbit lowered her chin. “I – _we_ need to talk to you.”

Silence waved elaborately, with a hard smile, then raised three fingers and pointed at Rabbit.

History snapped his book shut and pointed right in Silence’s face. “We had this conversation! People are not things!”

Silence scowled, turned to Rabbit, and made his writing gesture.

Rabbit felt herself flush at History reading the situation so deep and fast. “It’s not like that!” she blurted, before remembering she was probably covered in red dust, like Silence was.

History was taking her in with an expression he often wore, something between laughter and deep sadness. “Rabbit: where’s your mask?”

She exchanged a surprised look with Silence, then half-lifted the hand lightly holding it. “We were talking and we had to see you to go on and I - forgot?”

“Which means there’s something to talk about.”

Rabbit said, “We’re going to the Skullmouth, aren’t we?”

“Got it in one, bright eyes.” They had to slow down for History on the four long stairways up.

When they arrived, diffuse, reddish light sifted through the skull’s mouth and eyes, moonlight filtered through the enduring storm dust. The old water valves were locked shut against waste. Water went to the ground dwellers via a guarded pipe, these days. It was the same amount of water that the Immortan had doled out, but now, every drop was used. The stone steps up to the valves, that once held the Immortan, now hosted all the Citadel’s variety. A tall pair of young lovers were poised on the step in a light embrace, warmed by the reddish light.

History clapped his hands. “Move along, you two. Pumps team needs a look up there. _Wordburger: it’s business time._ ”

Grumbling, they cleared out. History cut off Rabbit’s start at protesting. “You’ve as much right to it as they do. Now. What’s the story?”

The steps were wide enough for the three of them to sit together. History sat on his book to gain an extra inch or so of height. The stone made a good surface for Silence’s occasional notes. Rabbit gave History a drastically edited version of how she and Silence had connected, parted, and reunited. Silence’s turn came when he explained in writing what they wanted to do: stay connected while he was in Gastown and she cared for the Citadel.

History remained grimly unpersuaded. "All well and good. It'd make a nice Tell. Sophia would've enjoyed it. So, Silence, tell me this. Who _are_ you? Why do you keep showing up? What do you do, exactly?"

In response, Silence yanked out his Gastown contract and fairly smacked it into the History Man's chest, writing meeting writing. Rabbit said, "He showed me that almost right away."

History worked his way through it page by page, muttering wordburgers. There was nothing to do but watch. Finally, he handed it back, grousing, "I was hoping you'd talk about your actual self. But it looks like you've got two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine days before you've got the right to do that."

Silence wrote where moonlight fell:

_citadel/gastown = sucks pipes_

_everything has a cost_

_run fuel, space, time_

_you = work it so we get those_

_settle your Citadel debt to me_

History ran his fingers over the last words. “Amortize it, more like. My morals are – _wordburger: loose and liberal_ \- after the apocalypse. We live in medieval times. Still. Some people, it’s like they were born for this Wasteland. Others, for civilisation. I place Rabbit on the civilisation side. Meant for a better world than, perhaps, we’ve ever had.” Rabbit went to cover her mouth, abashed at the compliment. But History was pointing at Silence again. “You, after what you were, you’re the worst of the Wasteland and the Before-time combined. A petroleum-soaked, manipulative Gastown schlanger on the come-up. The sort to take advantage of my desperation. That’s why I owe you.”

Rabbit’s heart sank. Silence smiled proudly and wrote:

_thanks! still owe_

Rabbit came to his defense. “He is civilized! He reads and writes. He shared protein with me – I mean, food. He doesn’t break deals. He’s killed people!”

“Why am I not surprised. While these are all useful qualities in a Wasteland mate,” History tapped Rabbit's knee, “I remain extremely reluctant. Has he said anything about _quid pro quo_?"

Silence looked confused. Rabbit knew the Before-time phrase. "Des asked me that, too. It's been like the Imperator's tribe said it should be, from the start."

History gave her an eye-meet that Rabbit knew, one that meant she'd be grilled more, later. For the moment, History turned to face Silence. "I didn't block the Sisters from choosing you as a Gastown negotiator. Won’t anything else do?”

Face beautifully hard, Silence tapped his last two statements again, and added a third.

_can’t do better than a mate_

History plunged into a verbal ramble on the edge of Rabbit’s comprehension. “Gastown mates! From Tom of Finland to Mills and Boon with one change. You wouldn't use the phrase if you weren't bloody serious. From what I've seen it leaves Wretched marriage in the Lepers' shade. I should have known something was up when Silence appeared without leaving leering chaos in his wake. _Wordburger: cherchez la femme!_ It can be argued that you don’t need my interference at all. You've flown under the radar this far, and Polecats and Warboys have been finding ways and means. Then again, when Gastown negotiators came to call in the Immortan’s day, it didn’t end well for the rest of the Citadel...not that us Wretches counted back then. So I suppose this makes sense. No. This is absurd. You should be at university, the pair of you, trying on life without it being the end of the world. But you’ve had to learn fast or die, in your own separate hells, and it _is_ the end of the world.”

Throughout this, Silence stared at the old man incredulously. Rabbit said, calmly, “You’re wordburgering.”

“Sorry.” The History Man rubbed between his eyebrows. “Are you sure about this, Rabbit?”

Rabbit turned it back on him. “The Sisters want to deal with him. Will you ask them, too?”

“Politics is one thing. Family is another, and you are family.” Rabbit’s throat swelled anew. She couldn't help glancing at Silence. He had the strange, still expression he'd worn when she'd finished the story of her life.

History caught this and sighed, deeply. “I can lay on the Wasteland Yoda trip and see what I get. You know what I mean, Rabbit. I need a phrase, the Sisters like that. Peace is built together? Mmmm, no. We redeem each other? If only it worked that way. Hm. _Wordburger: You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles._ I’ll work on it. Better selves…engage to heal… redemption… _”_

History frowned at Silence. “God knows you need some. I will ask for something extra from _you_ in return.”

Silence scowled back.

_you already owe ME extra_

History ignored this. “I deal right with you about this, you deal right with Rabbit. And that means dealing right with the Citadel. Thanks to the Sisters, you’re in a position to do that. We need the minimum of guzzoline and the minimum of conflict. No double-dealing. No back-end spying. You need to trust all of us, not just one.”

Silence nearly snarled. He wrote:

_match your Citadel deal, Gtown style_

_you say again I’d traitor a mate?_

_you’ll see I kill_

Rabbit gasped. But History said, with a laugh, “Good. Excellent! The traditional postapocalyptic reply is that I threaten you, now. My own killing days are past - but screw with my Wasteland daughter, and you'll see I've got people for that.” Turning to Rabbit, he added, mildly, “Just because I’m helping them stay civilized here doesn’t mean I put myself on the civilized side anymore. It’s been a long apocalypse.”

He brushed away Silence’s last writing. “Here’s a taster of trust to get you attention back in Gastown. Take it as one of your extras. The Imperator’s keen to ditch you lot for wildcat guzz. Corpus and I don’t like the quality of that stuff, and we can’t replace some of the equipment that uses it.”

Silence looked fascinated. He rubbed the fingers of one hand together.

“Whatever you can get for news like that in Gastown is your business. Sort that out yourself.” History cleared his throat. “For your deal with me, Silence, I’ll do what I can to pave the way for you to have a chance with Rabbit. Transport, space, and time - and overcoming your former owner's history here. In return, this Citadel gets its own chance. With one final condition. Rabbit, it’s your call. You didn't answer this before. Is this what you want?”

The very old man and the very young one both turned to Rabbit. “I get to say?”

“That’s how it should be,” said the History Man. " _Wordburger: as you wish_."

Silence seized Rabbit’s wrist. His face was bright and beseeching. History couldn’t know the depths of his hunger and ambition, how very much he planned to collect from Gastown. He wanted her for his own. Yet _love_ was barely in his vocabulary. Another word almost took its place for people like them: those alone and strange, trying to make something out of nothing. Those from the Wasteland. Softly, Rabbit said, “Deal.”

Silence exhaled, clenched her wrist like a gyve. She turned her hand in Silence’s grip to wrap her own fingers around his own wrist, leaving them holding hands and more.

History looked at their intertwined arms. He intoned, “A deal it is. For my tattooed hide’s sake, don’t either of you make me regret it.”

Briefly, his eyes met Rabbit’s. She could have sworn History winked at her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at last! How many times do I have to tell AO3 this is 32 chapters? Augh. Next up: Desperate considers her future and seizes another chance for some action. 
> 
> Wordburgers:  
>  _It’s business time_ = Flight of the Conchords.  
>  _quid pro quo_ = this for that: a query about bribes or conditions.  
>  _Loose and liberal_ = Samuel Delany, Return to Neveryon.  
>  _You rush a miracle man…_ Film/book The Princess Bride.


	31. Many mothers, many fighters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate crashes an all-women-fighters wake at the Citadel. There’s witnessing, War Girls, Vuvalini, mercenaries, ‘shine, and sass – and more action for Des.  
> Notes: Bringing in a mercenary from the Mad Max video game, Tenderloin! Also, recreational alcohol consumption, femslash, anal sex, oral sex, and dirty talk.

Desperate didn’t bother closing her legs. She did lever upright on the Infirmary bench to exclaim, “What do you mean, you can’t tell me yet if I’m pregnant? Isn’t that why you’re looking?”

The night shift’s supervising healer, Gillian, brushed back her silver Vuvalini braid. “You’re in one piece, which is a start. We need thirty days to be sure. It depends on many things. You’d only just begun to menstruate again.”

“The one time I ask for some science, this is what I get.” Des pouted at Gillian.

This look had worked on Smith, but Gillian’s expression didn’t change. Instead, the older woman said, thoughtfully, “Des. We say we’re the Many Mothers, now, Vuvalini and Citadel women together. Perhaps we say it too much. You’re more than who you are as a mother. “

Des snorted. “I’ve been a lot of things. Enough that I know what I’m good at by now.” With three infants dead behind her, it certainly wasn’t being a mother.

“It’s never too late to change,” Gillian said.

There was a knock of metal on the stone outside the examination alcove. “It’s me, Smith.”

Des shrugged. “Let her in. She’s heard all about it, might as well see it.”

Smith poked her head through the curtain. “They sent me to ask if it’s still fine to have that circle around the wheel shrine nearby.”

“This is the wake the War Girls wanted?” Gillian asked. The word had dim funereal associations from Desperate’s settlement childhood. She stayed alert for more meaning.

“The one they’re trying. Women only, fighters only.”

Gillian smiled. “And a bottle of ‘shine. It should be all right. Simply keep them from being too loud.” She reached behind her and passed Smith a large, medicinal-looking bottle.

Desperate raised her eyebrows. “Women fighters, you say?” She hopped off the bench and began to wrap her lower half back up. “Can I come along?” To Gillian, she said, “I’ve got ideas. Like you were saying: we’re more than mothers.”

Easygoing Smith said, “I don’t see why not. They’ve seen you shooting at the target range.”

Gillian paused Des with a touch on her arm. “It’s up to you if you fight, and up to you if you drink. If you want to keep a possible child, be gentle with yourself. If you don’t want to keep it…I think you know what to do.”

* * *

Tenderloin considered herself to be working. Right now, that included not slitting the throat of the Gastown captain who’d hired her for this filthy dull Citadel job. On day four without fume, this was getting more challenging by the second.

The captain, Torcher, was going spare about some missing Polecat. Narrow black eyes snapping like ignition sparks, she growled, “Rando’s only running this rust because I’m in charge and I’m a woman and they’re not used to it.”

Tenderloin shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. “Signed up with you hoping I’d knife some kamicrazy, not this. Could be bartering for the good stuff in Gastown right now.”

Torcher’s broad, golden face surveyed Tenderloin with contempt. “Joe-damn mercenaries. The only reason I’m putting up with you is the whole Wasteland knows you pack your Citadel crew with women, now. That’s why you got scraped out of your fume barrel.”

“Y’walk away from the Gastown Races,” Tenderloin’s grin sliced her face, “y’write your own ticket.”

Torcher shoved back her black braid, laced with red cords, and widened her strong shoulders. It might have intimidated Tenderloin if the other woman wasn’t a head shorter. “Laneway trash, fighting for anyone who’ll throw you a fume canister!”

Tenderloin got interested. “Y’holding?” The Bullet Farm and Gastown blamed each other for dark, addictive fume. The stuff had oozed far beyond its official use, giving mining slaves a reason to live. Not that anyone admitted where they’d picked up a taste for it.

Torcher took a deep breath, then went canny. “Someone in this place has to be. I watched Force score some chrome earlier. Keep moving with me and you can ask.”

Tenderloin bared her teeth at Force's name. Her annoyance with Torcher was nothing compared to the mutual loathing between her and the Refinery snots. “Really don’t want their Wretched to eat you, huh?” 

“I’ve got enough problems.” Torcher was staring around as they went, peering into rooms, eyeing people up and down. She was curious, but not about to confide in Tenderloin to say so. That suited Tenderloin fine. The last thing she wanted was someone wanting to be mates, splitting every score. 

Torcher sniffed. “Smell that? Fresh air. We must be near the crossing to the Seige Tower.” Tenderloin ignored this, too. Fume had killed her sense of smell long ago. But Torcher was right. Shortly, they were at the gate. There were two guards, heads shaved, painted skull to waist in white clay and dark carbon. One was as wiry and tall as Tenderloin, the other substantial in every way possible. They were both, unexpectedly, women.

Two groups of women coming up against each other was nearly unheard of in Gastown. The Citadel guards weren’t expecting this, either. They all stared at each other, nonplussed.

Torcher recovered first. “Evening. You’re War Girls? Those new elite fighters?” This won her two brief nods. Torcher tapped her metal Gastown sigil. “I’m running the Gastown crew. You see one of our Polecats? Young bloke, answers to Rando, got a red shirt on.”

The War Girls hadn’t. The big one said, “What kind of idiot wears a red shirt?”

Torcher sighed. “Tell us about it. The kid’s a showoff. If you see him, hit him upside the head and send him back to me.”

“Can I hit him a couple of times?” asked the skinny War Girl.

“Hit him all you want, as long as you send him back. I’ll make it worth your while. The little smeg just came out of Polecat training. He owes Gastown his hide for that.”

Tenderloin decided _War Girl_ was a misnomer as the bigger guard flexed.  Having given her muscles an airing, that one said, “Will do. We don’t want him here. Polecats are _psychotic.”_

“You aren’t wrong,” Torcher grumbled.

The Citadel pair gave Torcher a V8 salute, which she reciprocated. Tenderloin took advantage of the moment. “What’s there to do in this place? Y’got any connections? I got ammo,” she said, rattling her pockets.

The Citadel pair exchanged a look. They were weighing the situation, deciding something. The War Woman said, “You could come with us once sundown’s finished. There’s a gathering.”

“Fighters only, women only,” said her friend. Torcher’s eyes widened. The War Girl went on. “It’s the first storm since our mate, she died. Died historic, raiding with the Imperator. We’ll Tell about her, pass around some shine. Some of Gastown was on that raid, too. You could Witness for them. The more Witnesses the better.”

Torcher glanced over quickly. “In?”

“In,” said Tenderloin. They’d had her at ‘shine’.

Soon, two War Boys came over to take the guard post, and the War Girls went out into the early dark of a storm evening. By the time Torcher had gasped and staggered her way over the swing bridge, arm in arm with the War Woman, they were friendlier than Torcher and Tenderloin had ever been. This, too, was fine.

The swing bridge was Tenderloin’s first time out of the War Tower. She took a gander down from the height. In the dusk, warm light glimmered from apertures in the tall towers around and the huts below. Other people made Tenderloin twitchy. The only way for her to put up with Gastown’s crowds was to be deadened with fume. In contrast, the Wasteland, Tenderloin’s hunting ground for prey and bounty, was a weird, hollow place. Here, at the Citadel, the lights showed where other people were. But they were far enough away for it to be all right.

“This is the Seige Tower,” the War Woman said, leading them in. A few turns later, they were in a high-ceilinged space, a repair shop of some kind. A wheel tower stood to one side in the center, the height of a person, ringed by stone benches. At the tower’s base, a twining plant reached its tendrils to the few steering wheels it held, turning it into a shrine. Somewhere in the distance was an unfamiliar sound: a child crying for a moment.

“Plants. Kids,” Torcher murmured. Her red-painted lips smiled thoughtlessly. Tenderloin was unmoved by these Citadel marvels. She elbowed Torcher to get her attention, directed Torcher’s eye with a hard thrust of her chin. The Citadel’s fighting women were sitting in the ruddy shadows.

They outnumbered the Gastown pair substantially. There were two big, dark women, typical Citadel lookers, holding firearms. There were six other women who might have been War Girls, might have been Wretched: their white and ochre striped body paint was confusing. On the other side of the wheel shrine was a woman who read like a Wastelander, tanned and bright-eyed, white curls spilling from under her headband. She sat next to someone even Tenderloin knew, the hard-eyed Citadel powerhouse called the Knowing. And right next to the wheels, flexing her steel arm, was the hardest one of all. A warlord in her den, the match of Torcher and Tenderloin together: Imperator Furiosa.

Torcher grabbed Tenderloin’s shoulder. “Under no circumstances schlang this up. No thieving, no fighting.” Tenderloin shook her off, scowling. This was what she got for doing her job. When Torcher turned to the big lookers and gushed, “Are you Milking Mothers?” Tenderloin wished she’d just lick their boots, already. She went and sat near the archway beside the skinnier War Girl. If she had to, she could take that one out.

Two latecomers arrived. Another tanned Wastelander, tall as a tower, marched in, flourishing a bottle. She declared loudly, “All right, everyone! We’re good here but we have to be quiet!”

“So we can’t allow Smith to say anything else,” quipped the woman walking beside her.

Tenderloin’s smile cut again. This last one, a whitefella dressed in a milker’s cream cotton, had dealt dirty with the Refinery guards. Tenderloin had enjoyed watching her screaming at Force that morning.  And those cotton bands wrapped around her didn’t stop her body from shimmying.  The milker was more circumspect here. She sat down at the gathering’s edge, between Tenderloin and the War Girl.

The War Girl immediately said, “What are you doing here, Mother? You’re not a fighter.”

“I was before I came up. Fought my way into the Mongrels, down below. Maybe I’ll be again, soon.” The milker drew a crude dagger from her wraps and tapped it against her knee. The War Girl sat back and took this, like the milker was a real threat. Tenderloin figured she could take the milker out, too. It was luck that the milker and the War Girl didn’t read like they were particular friends. Nothing was more unpredictable than fighting a tight pair.

As the women settled, a first round of ‘shine was circulating. When the shine came to the milker, she held the bottle in her very clean hand, considering. Tenderloin already knew this one was down to deal. She flashed a few brass-cased bullets and muttered, “Barter you for your swallow?”

The milker’s eyes went sly. She plucked the bullets away and handed over the bottle. Crisp enough for the War Girl to hear, she said, “You can have mine.” Tenderloin drank deep and passed it to the War Girl. After a sip, the bottle was returned to the Imperator.

The Imperator set it down at her feet. A hush fell. Tenderloin expected the Imperator to stand and start talking. But, instead, it was the younger woman, the Knowing, who took that lead. She brushed her dark quiff of hair upwards and began.

“Thank you for coming. Those who remember the old Citadel remember how it was when all the fighters here were War Boys, how they were Witnessed and recalled at this wheel shrine. Those of you from the ground,” the Knowing gestured at the white-and-ochre striped women, “You mark events on these storm nights. We’re bringing both ways together for something new. We’re here to Witness as women for a woman, a War Girl, who died fighting for our new Citadel. We’ll name ourselves and Tell her memory. I am called Toast the Knowing.” She sat back down.

The Imperator stood next. “I am… Furiosa Jobassa.” There was a rustle. A call with Before-time softness wasn’t what most of them had expected from the Imperator. Tenderloin stayed impassive. Wasn’t her own name a taunt, a cannibal tease? There was a Gastown mercenary called Princess. Nobody was sure if the name was _his_ idea or _her_ idea. What was certain was they’d picked it and if you were tired of addressing Princess the way Princess wanted, you were tired of life.

The others named themselves. Most of their names were strange words, plant words that didn’t stick in Tenderloin’s dusty mind. She remembered the most dangerous ones: the big War Girl, Lex, and the Wastelanders, Smith and Atomic Annie. The milker, after being challenged, said her name quietly. Tenderloin wasn’t sure if she was Des or Death.

The third time about, the War Girls took the lead. Lex and the War Girl alternated the dead fighter’s story. How she’d wormed out of the Breeders’ compound and joined in with the war pups. How she’d found the other girls looking for war, a cook’s daughter here, an Imperator’s byblow there. How they’d watched each others’ backs, bound each other’s tits flat, fought and survived. They had admired the Citadel’s life and death of war, tolerated on its edges, barely. The Imperator spoke at last, about noticing the short, fiery War Girl.

Then came the Fury Road. The new era was the War Girls’ chance to fight openly in the Citadel’s front lines. It had come soon enough for the dead War Girl, wracked by feverish half-life. She had taken on a suicide mission, armed to the teeth and wired with explosives, worming into a cave stronghold to collapse it. Her sacrifice had turned a siege back into a raid, a victory for both the new Citadel and Gastown.

This, they Witnessed, each in her own way: streaked with tears, bright with pride, battle-weary. Tenderloin glanced at the milker. Her face was a cool mask, inscrutable. She tapped the dagger on her knee, once.

Torcher was listening open-mouthed. At the end, she joined the Citadel women as they all made some weird hand gesture. The gesture, a fist without a fight, baffled Tenderloin. The milker noted Tenderloin’s withdrawal. She said, quietly, “You’re allowed.”

The ‘shine went around again, starting their talk once more. Again, the milker nodded at Tenderloin, who went for a double swallow. This Citadel stuff was smooth. Tenderloin felt herself approaching all right. Torcher glared at Tenderloin and ran a hand across her throat, trying to tell her to cut herself off. Tenderloin, again, ignored her.

Smith saw this and laughed. Gesturing at both Gastown women, she asked, “You two together?”

Torcher looked horrified. Tenderloin said, “Smeg, no. That one’s got four regular screws back in Gastown.”

Annie exclaimed, “Four!” Sitting next to Torcher, she batted Torcher’s upper arm, gently. “You, I like.”

The milker smiled craftily and asked, “How does that work?”

Torcher had gone burgundy. “Well, there’s my mate, Skuxx, and he’s got,” she caught herself in time, “A fella, and sometimes… you know.”

“Don’t know that I do know,” said Annie. “I think you’ll have to explain it. In detail. A lot more detail!” Most of the other women laughed. Even the Imperator mustered a half-smile. Annie asked, “What about the other two?”

Torcher preened. “You go around Gastown good and fit, others like what they see, they make offers. The other two are mates themselves. Hard workers. Hardly sick at all.” Tenderloin was about to be sick herself at Torcher’s primness.

Around the circle, the dark women were gaping openly. One of them said, “Doesn’t your mate mind?”

“Three more’s not a lot!” said Torcher. Tenderloin caught the milker looking wry and bitter. Their eyes met. The milker let her mouth twitch.

The Knowing said, thoughtfully, “It’s like the Immortan…except the other way around.”

Atomic Annie's white curls bounced as she shook her head, chuckling. “Can I come back with you?”

“Don’t do it, Annie!” one woman cried.

“You can do the same thing here. Trust me, I know,” said the milker. There was more laughter.

Torcher sat up, arcing out her full chest. “How’s it work here? For - women?”

“Everyone’s different,” said Annie.

The skinny War Girl gestured at Lex. “We’re lancer and driver.”

Smith added, “I’ve been married for years, my wife is here.”

The big dark women joined hands. One said, “We’re together too, but we don’t say married. Not after the Immortan.”

Tenderloin saw Smith clock that the bottle had gotten stuck with her. She strode over and jerked the bottle away to hold it high. “Once more around for the new Citadel.”

Tenderloin gave the fighter a challenging glare. “Is it true the Wretched eat ya here?”

“Not anymore. And _you_ don’t get to call them Wretched,” Smith said, grimly.

Tenderloin leered. “Aw. I was hopin’ they’d do a good job.”

Atomic Annie called, “Looking to trade some paint? Can’t go wrong with one of the Treadmill stamping fellas. They’re the ones who really get it up!” The ochre-striped fighters exchanged nudges and smiles.

The War Girls went defiant. “The War Boys, they’re our brothers. Can't do better than that. Could set you up…if you’re tough enough,” said Lex.

The milker who might have been Death purred, “Nothing wrong with us Wretched. They say once you go feral, you never go back.”

“That so?” Tenderloin leaned towards the milker, opening her stance.  “How do you roll?”

The milker’s green eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

Tenderloin extracted a gambler’s die from a pocket, carved from human bone. She turned the one towards the milker. “Aces? Means you’re out of the game.”

She shrugged, setting her cotton wraps moving in interesting ways. “Fine for some. That leaves more for me.”

A spin of Tenderloin’s scarred fingers revealed the two. “Mates? You play in a pair?”

The milker rolled her eyes. “Been there. Drove on.”

Tenderloin flashed the six. “Or you up for a loaded rig? All crew and any comers?”

The milker flung back her head and laughed. Her teeth were bright and healthy, like an animal’s.  “The rig and the tankers! Tell you what.” She leaned in and breathed, “You show me some of your moves, how you make it as a fighter, I’ll show you mine.”

Tenderloin palmed the die. This would be something to throw back in the teeth of those Refinery snots. “Deal.”

* * *

After the wake’s gentle end, most of the women clustered about the wheel tower to talk further. Many of the other women sought to give each of the War Girls a warm embrace, rolling foreheads together. Des watched their faces. When the Imperator did this, the  thinner one closed her eyes, as if swayed by memory. Beefy Lex stayed tense. After her Wasteland life, Des herself found this new custom too close for comfort. To her, touch meant fighting or screwing.

The lean stranger she’d picked out, Tenderloin, was getting sorted with Torcher.  Des liked Torcher’s strut and bluster, admired her flashes of red: but liking and wanting were different. She caught Tenderloin’s hoarse, light voice saying, “We’re gonna go spar.” And then some, Des thought.

Torcher put her fists on her hips, outraged. “How’m I supposed to walk back alone?”

Tenderloin rasped, heedlessly, “Said they won’t eat ya.” She turned on her heel towards Des. Tenderloin didn’t care about the other woman, but she did care about herself. Her black curtain of hair was cut with a razor-sharp edge. She’d bartered up some tattoos, cloudy black ink with skulls peering out, was stowing matching gloves on the belt weighing down her waist. She was a sight skinnier than Des’ usual screws, but Rabbit might be on to something there. (Rabbit, sought out for four nights running? Invited to be a concubine? _Rabbit?)_   Des shrugged in a direction and started to walk that way. The other woman followed. Des felt reassured. Rabbit was young: Des was everything else.

She smirked. Once in a while, Wasteland or Wretched, she’d plain wanted to do it, and another person had, too. They’d come up with a vague excuse for a deal, like tonight. After Force and Dexter, Des was twitchy with leftover energy. And it had been a while since Des had sparred properly, or gone with someone who wouldn’t breed her up. Des was genuinely curious to see what the lean fighter had on her side besides cold ferocity. War Girls and Vuvalini had learned from each other. Des knew that, as a raw survivor, she was at a disadvantage next to them, and she'd take what she could get.

They didn’t have to go far to find one of the Citadel’s darkest shadows for shelter. Every former Wretch knew this corridor, the end of it sealed with a double layer of stone. It used to be where the Wretched found wanting by the Citadel were hurled to their deaths. The new Citadel held that it was haunted. That made it a good place for Des to deal undisturbed. “So. Those moves. Where do you want to start?” Des said.

Tenderloin drank her in, up and down. “Why bother? Y’re the type to talk your way out of anything,” she said.

Des put her hands on her hips. “It’s true, I’d rather be on my back alive than dead. Still, I want more options than running or spreading.”

Tenderloin’s chuckle rasped. “Kissin’ don’t last, kicking does.” She stalked around Des. “You got real clothes?”

“It can happen.”

Tenderloin tsk’ed. “Too easy to do this.” A serpentine jerk on one of the lappets of her cotton skirt whirled Des around. Des whipped her knife out as she spun.

That earned her a nod. “Dirty instincts. Good. Y’armed, y’go for hands, wrists. They don’t expect it. Hurts ‘em at a distance.”

A few more moves showed Des what Tenderloin had. She was _fast_ – she’d break your nose or slit your neck before you felt the blow. In short order, Tenderloin had Des backed against the wall, a hard hand around Des’ wrist, poised to crush a nerve. In her ear, Tenderloin growled, “Shouldn’t even let me this near if you ain’t giving it up. Keep ‘em away.”

“One man, one bullet,” Des muttered.

“If you’re lucky. Spear ‘em, thunderstick ‘em, puke at ‘em. Trapped this tight, go for eyes an’ throat, feet an’ knees.” Her hand pressed as she spoke. One of her boots parted Des’ lower legs, nudged between her sandals.

“Like this?” Des turned and bit the other woman’s neck sinews.

With a cruel, laughing breath, Tenderloin allowed this. There wasn’t much difference, seducing one type of fighter over another. Des was less wary in some ways: more, in others. Though a swirl of tattoos clearly led beneath grimy fabric to ink over one of Tenderloin’s breasts, Des kept her hands on the flesh the other woman had chosen to expose. The skin over Tenderloin’s skull tattoos, with its powdery feel, was the only softness about her.

Des turned in the fighter’s lax grip and went mouth to mouth. Her second kiss in five days: talk about going Citadel soft. Tenderloin was inclined to indulge. She tasted like shine and, under that, guzzoline. Des probed with her tongue again. She genuinely tasted like guzzoline – a marker of a fumehead. Des had dealt with worse. She sucked in Tenderloin’s breath, but stayed clear-headed. That meant the other woman had enough wits about her to deal. “What do you want?”

“Citadel shine’s all right. Thought I’d try some Citadel chrome.” Her hard hands seized Desperate’s breasts, leaving grimy marks on her cotton. “Force scored his twice – you and the good stuff.”

Des nearly laughed. Force had snared some chrome? That broke a strong new Citadel law right there. True or not, it was twice chrome for Des. She’d pass the rumor on to the Vuvalini. Force himself, trapped in the War Tower tonight, would be on the grill about it. Her pulse thrummed with victory. In an excellent mood, Des rolled her bare knee against the other woman’s crotch, nudging a gas mask out of the way to the worn, warmed fabric there. “Still want the Wretched to eat you?”

“Citadel…” Tenderloin hissed. The world blurred, for an instant. Tenderloin had spun her around to park her in a corner at the end of the tunnel. Des was blocked in by sinewy inked arms, hands on the wall on either side, pinned by Tenderloin's gimlet glare. “Do what you do here. Don’t go in my quim.” 

Des moved her own hands down. “This is Citadel,” she said, and undid Tenderloin’s belts. Did the other woman understand all the meaning packed in those three words - the relief, the freedom? Probably not. Des loosed her own wraps to have something to kneel on, burying her dagger in the fabric. Oh, she was vulnerable. Their half-done deal was wispier than the diesel sweetness of fume. And this keen fighter had all the Wasteland’s expectations about Citadel women, from before and after the revolution, tangled together. Chrome breeders for the taking, fierce warriors skilled at pleasuring each other. Des’ challenge was to channel both.

Tenderloin wasn’t shedding her trousers. To get her mouth where it needed to be, Des had to wedge her face between tattooed thighs. She nuzzled and burrowed, working through the tastes of smoke, ammonia, and salt, through ink-softened skin and wiry hair and paired piercings, to a hint of quim at last. Des got in and let herself be hungry for human flesh.

Tenderloin tangled calloused hands in Desperate’s pampered locks, growling obscenities. Des took the clamp on her skull as a compliment and did her damnedest. Tenderloin’s quim was as unexpectedly light as her voice, slick and indistinct with arousal. Des lavished everything she could find with attention.

But, even with some teeth, she couldn’t get Tenderloin to peak. That was an irregular business for Des as well. Remembering difficult Force, she slid her shameless tongue as far back as she could, then pulled away, inhaling deeply. “How about here?” Des pistoned her right hand like a gun, her thumb strategically placed in front, her clever index finger pressing in back.

Tenderloin spread wider. Her voice was as rattled as a bad road. “Get in there and tell me the filthiest thing you’ve ever done.”

Des probed. “One time I owed this gang…” She drove her hand home. It had been the time Des had meant to traitor the settlement where she’d been born. Except they’d showed up to find the place flat, cold ashes. “Owed them big time. All I had to barter was me, to ten of them. Two women, one of those in-between types: they liked having someone to order around. And seven filthy men, scav scum.”

“They wanted flesh. They’d spit-roast anyone, dead or alive. I was gang-banged. Road war bait. Their game was that if I lived ‘till dawn, I could walk. They had me down to the bone – but I had them, too. Lived through it by setting one man against the other. Told one he had the biggest schlanger I’d ever seen, but his mate in front pumped a crazy load of guzz. Praised the one who wasn’t getting off – said he was made of steel, got someone else mad to try and outlast him. One against the other. I could only take on five at once. The ones left out got impatient, got busy with each other. The filth was insane. When they were drained, they got weapons out – " Des paused. Tenderloin had hissed and pulsed against her, then gone stone-still, save for her breath rasping hollow.

Des was glad to stop the story there. “How about you? What’s the filthiest thing you’ve ever done?”

“After that?” Tenderloin snaked back to life, pulling on Desperate’s hair, wrenching her onto her feet. “You.”

She dragged Des up, in the general direction of the wall, and brought her half-done energy to bear. They grappled again, Des fighting to lose. Soon Des had one hand pinned to the wall, above and behind her, and Tenderloin’s bony right hip crushing between her legs. Citadel stone supported Des, its gritty coolness refreshing her. Des spread wider, arching hungrily, to thrust flesh against bone. “Right here. My hot spot.”

“Bitch,” Tenderloin growled. Her tough, narrow hands skimmed between Desperate's legs. Still tight, Des had recovered enough to swell lush with desire. “Fukushima. More like a hot zone.” That was right, after surviving Brute, but Des shoved memory aside for present hunger. Lovers could tell when your mind wandered.

Tenderloin did what she'd liked herself, grinding pistoning with the fingers of her more scarred hand. Des opened herself, let her hot spot be hammered. Her thighs felt watery. This was good. The glow of arousal, the feel of strange flesh, some safety, some admiration: it was all close to what Des had given so many. She closed her eyes, to be human flesh herself, lost in the red throb of her blood. And found what came so rarely: a flash of the fire she’d felt with Brute. It was enough to make her own engine seize.

She reached down and stopped Tenderloin’s hand. Des had to grip hard. “Hey! I’m done.”

Tenderloin gave her a last clench, making Des gasp briefly. “Thought you’d want it all night.”

“You know what you’re doing. Better than seven scavs did.” Des leaned away and stood on her own, tugging her wraps back into place. “I’m done and good.” The cotton settled about Des comfortably. She felt right in her skin. Tenderloin smacked her hands against her inked thighs with an air of satisfaction and got her gear back on.  As soon as her last belt was done, she began to go. Des wouldn’t admit to waiting for her, even to herself. Her excuse was that the cotton wraps always took some final adjustments. Eyeing Tenderloin, considering her own plans, Des started plotting how to barter up some real clothes.

They stalked next to each other back to the wheel tower. At edge of the space, they stopped, together. Paused. Des had something to say to the other woman. More, she had the unusual feeling that it was reciprocated. She glanced up under her lashes, shifting expectantly. “Well?”

“Wasn’t bad at all, getting eaten by the Wretched.” Tenderloin said. “Y’r wraps are smeg. Picked this off you easy.” She handed over Desperate’s crude dagger.

“Good hands,” Des replied. “But watch your own back when there’s chrome around.” She passed back the items she’d nicked off Tenderloin: a compass, a pocket shank, and a fetish of bird bones snared in colored wire.

Tenderloin snatched them, expressionless for a moment. She gave in to a half-admiring sneer. Des smiled back, sharply.

If they’d met in the Wasteland…she felt a flicker of potential. They could have been bait and backup, a mercenary pair, weathering over time into something like the Vuvalini. That might’ve worked back when Des had a different name, been young enough to hope with someone. Before she’d learned to place her own skin first: before the fume and fighting had settled hard on Tenderloin. The other woman was damaged salvage, found too late. Des felt that same warped brittleness inside herself. She had only just begun to trust the Citadel. Would she throw that away for a roll of the dice? Des thought about the story she’d told, what she'd done over the past few days, and decided: no. Rabbit had the right idea, not throwing over Citadel security for a decent screw.

“Good luck out there,” Des said.

“Mnh. I’ll sure watch my back after you,” said Tenderloin. “Citadel chrome.”

Tenderloin strolled back to the wheel shrine. Des watched from where she stood. The last two women left from the wake were Torcher and Atomic Annie, talking quietly with the wheel tower between them.

Annie frowned at Des. “There you are.” She strolled up, eyes roving over the grimy fingerprints smearing Des’s wraps and skin.

Des tilted her chin up and replied to everything Annie wasn’t saying. “You’d be disappointed if I hadn’t.” Delicately, she yawned. “Nice of you to wait. Let’s go. I’ve got something for you.”

On the other side of the wheel shrine, Torcher was going off like her namesake. “You’re unbelievable. We have to get going NOW. I don’t want to think about what the crew’s been up to after you holding me up here.”

The last word Des caught was Tenderloin’s. “Whatever!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the Mad Max video game, Tenderloin is a sometimes-ally, sometimes-antagonist to Max. One of...hmmm...four female characters. Some [fanart of Tenderloin is here](http://spader7.tumblr.com/post/128666167137) (by professional artist ylvastudio.com).


	32. Owning up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rabbit and Silence share a last Citadel night. Also, Gastown mateship and Wretched marriage, warlords and death, and a final thought for Max and Furiosa.  
> Notes: Het sexytimes, mild body horror.

When the History Man left the Skullmouth after a final wordburger, Silence exhaled with relief. History’s Before-time glibness and too-cunning eyes and old man’s smell set Silence on edge. It was more than enough to remind him of the People Eater. He didn’t want to think about repulsive old men more than he had to, with Rabbit beside him. But he’d use what he’d learned from them to get what he wanted. Silence tapped Rabbit's knee to get her attention.

Rabbit was startled out of her own thoughts. History was layering meaning, she knew, with his last words: _the rest is up to you young people._ He meant not only her and Silence with each other, but their wider work for the two strongholds. She watched as Silence wrote:

_got some time_

_your room?_

Rabbit was hesitant. “Yes? No? After last night, I…”

With one of his edged smiles, Silence gave his right fist a twist in the air.

_pain?_

_can work around_

“No. You need light to talk with writing. But I may be out of kerosene, in my room. For my lanterns. I get a ration and I may have gone through it.” She bowed her head, looking at him sidelong.

Silence tightened to the same appalled expression he’d worn for the men’s barracks. Was he going to be like Cheedo? Raised in a Citadel garden, Cheedo went wide-eyed with shock when she heard what it took to live on the Wretched ground. Or like Toast, stolen from a tribe of Wasteland rovers? Toast was blunt enough to declare when something disgusted her. Rabbit didn’t have it in her to go through last night’s awful confusion again. With Silence, she had that Wasteland rarity, a second chance. If this was going to work, she had to succeed at the Vuvalini’s challenge for Citadel women: negotiating.

Running out of petroleum products was the one thing that never happened in Gastown. Silence was as outraged as if it had happened to him. Because it had. Rabbit being his mate meant his life had twice the potential for courage, knowing, barter – and double the chance to suffer. While Silence grappled with all this, Rabbit’s fingers danced on her knees in quiet calculation. She spoke before he’d decided what to write. “I _may_ have some left. We can try?”

In response, Silence seized Rabbit’s wrist again. Pulling her up, he headed for the stairs. Rabbit tripped after his longer stride. She hadn’t had the chance to mask up again. Having forgotten earlier did make it matter less.

When they left the stairs near her room, Silence pointed at the hallway torch. Rabbit said, “Those need to stay out here. Let me do what I can.” Opening her door wide, she was nimble in the darkness. Soon she was lining up her four jar lanterns where the torchlight entered. She tilted one jar, then another, until what fuel she had was consolidated. It was hard to be patient for the last clinging drops, especially tonight. But Rabbit knew it made a difference.

Silence had the sense she’d done this before. He slid the hall torch free and held it over Rabbit, lighting her work. When she began to examine the scorched wick stubs, he snapped his fingers, then tossed her one of his rags. She bit her lower lip with concern, asking, “You’re sssure?” Impatient, he nodded. After Rabbit furled a scrap into a wick, she conscientiously handed the rest of the tattered fabric back to him. Silence stowed it, along with everything her care showed him about the Citadel’s resources - or lack thereof.

Rabbit took a flint kit from her tool belt. There was enough kerosene for an hour or so, and more than one old wick for a fire starter. The flint sparked, and the old wick caught, and the new wick lit at its first touch. Her shoulders dropped in relief. Carefully, she tiptoed inside, placing the lantern at the head of her bed. She plucked up her water bottle.

“Can you put the torch back, before someone sees? I’ll fill this. Your mouth was dry.”

Silence pointed at the bottle, then at the single lantern.

“It’s different with aqua-cola…I’ll be back.”

Silence worked the torch back into place and stalked into her room. What did she mean by that? The water wasn’t rationed? He’d seen what the History Man had to do with Rabbit: work through her Wretched evasions for a yes or no answer. If she was his, Silence had to bind her to that beyond her own doubts. How to do it tonight, without tearing her to pieces? He sat down on the edge of her bed-like pillow heap, brushing a cushion aside. And thought of several things at once.

When Rabbit returned, Silence was sitting shirtless and barefoot on the edge of her bed. He tapped the chalk. Rabbit darted over. He was writing on the smooth concrete slab below the pillows.

_OK to write here?_

“Oh! Yes! Smart.” Rabbit perched by Silence and placed the water between them. “Go ahead.” When he drank, his pale throat pulsed. The chain hanging between his pierced nipples rose and fell. The room was dim enough to obscure the livid scars Rabbit had seen on his chest before. She felt her own pulse in her throat. “Your chest. Does it hurt, with the metal?” Silence shrugged.

_don’t feel it any more_

"Why do you have it?"

_to remind_

Silence took one of her hands, placed it over his left nipple. Breathless, Rabbit stroked. She hadn’t dared touch him there before. The pebbled flesh was surprisingly tough around the metal. Her fingers slid to one side, to the warmth over his heart. He barely registered the caress. Instead, he reached up and gave his right nipple a hard pull. Rabbit flinched, but his expression didn’t change. He scooped up the chain and offered its centre to Rabbit with his wickedest smile. She took the chain, only to pat it down against him.

Silence laughed from his throat. She’d learn. He shifted closer to her, sliding a cheek against hers. The sidelong embrace relaxed her. He sleeked his hands up her back, unknotting her halter, pulling at the modesty band binding her breasts. After breathing into her ear for a moment, he drew back and snapped his fingers, sharply. He made a gesture with both hands, opening something. She took Silence’s meaning and finished undressing.

Silence exhaled again at what it was to be with her. With her patience and smarts, for once in his life, he was understood. He fell back against the cushions and undid his belt, taking in Rabbit’s own shy turns as she undressed. All the things he knew he couldn’t do to her tonight made him burn. He was half-hard already with the urges to bite her and drink her, mark her and scar her, cut himself to pieces rutting against her sharp hip bones.

Mesmerised, Rabbit watched Silence slither out of his trousers. One moment, he was a soft creature, gleaming hair falling over his forehead, his bowed and branded neck vulnerable. The next, he writhed with fine muscles, like an albino serpent, the wrongness of his chest piercings standing out. Studded leather bindings strapped the base of his cock again. They reminded Rabbit that he had been a slave, handed out as a luxury. 

This man in Rabbit’s bed was unbelievable. But, then, she’d had the wild good fortune to be taken up into the Citadel. She remembered how she’d trembled on the Treadmill up, burning through such exultance and fear that she’d stepped into the Citadel with her normal wariness. The same cautious surrender to a new reality had her as she paused. “If. If we’re mates, but we aren’t in the same place. We should talk about that.”

Silence showed what he thought of that by slumping in frustration. He offered Rabbit the chain a second time.

Yet again, Rabbit was reminded of Spark, and his winning tricks to try and get his child’s way. “We should, while you have the light for writing.”

Silence huffed and wrote,

_true_

_do a lot in the dark, but not that_

Rabbit leaned over Silence to read. This put her hip bones, and the triangle of her quim, distractingly near his face. He scrawled the first thing that came to mind.

_we’re mates_

_i’m here =  you’re mine_

“All right,” Rabbit breathed, eagerly.

_i’m not = use your head to pick other screws_

_profit, stay clean_

Shocked, she cried, “I don’t want anyone but you! And who else wants me?” She curled her hands in front of her cleft mouth to admit, “I know it’s different for you.”

Lips pressed hard, Silence nodded.

_bait, Gastown filth_

_but I deal clean_

Rabbit knelt down on the floor beside him and tapped the first line, protesting. “Don’t say that!”

_you ever say not wretched?_

She paused. “No. Some leave it behind. Me…it’s my history. I can’t forget. I’ll never not be afflicted.”

_same_

_but different_

_you're Citadel & a woman_

Silence pointed at Rabbit, then rubbed his fingers together in the barter gesture, indicating value.

Rabbit closed her eyes to let this moment sink into her memory. “Thank you.”

Silence read her pleasure at the small fact, enough to make her malleable. He weighed her near warmth, kneeling in front him: considered how easy it would be to undo her right now, against what he’d just told her. That he dealt clean. He curled his left hand into a fist and made himself write.

_on run here_

_dealt w/Force for a session_

_due tomorrow night_

Rabbit’s eyes flew wide. “Not him! He hurt Des when she went with him.” Desperate hadn’t said what Force had done to her. For Des to admit Force had been a mistake, it must have been awful. Worse, Silence was agreeing.

_that’s Force_

_it’s a done deal_

_bust it = an enemy_

_keep it = an ally_

Rabbit understood. This was the dirty, necessary side of survival outside the Citadel. She knew what she would have done before the Citadel if she could have dealt that way, for food, or aqua-cola, or simply to feel less of a throwaway. “It’s like that. When you do - or it happens - you’ll tell me?”

_telling you now_

_gtown mates = honest, defend, share barter gains_

_will split score from Force with you_

Silence wrote that firmly, feeling very noble. He’d have to take Force’s promised compensation, chrome, and barter it on into something he could split with her.

Rabbit said, “That’s how the Wretched did it, too. The married, they’d stay together, give each other their last water. If it was their urine, that’s what they’d give. They mock that, now: ‘Wretched marriage,’ they say. But it could be life. Here at the Citadel…” Rabbit sighed. “After the Immortan nobody wants to be a wife, to be married any more. Only old people say that. They’re couples and partners and they try to be very Before-time. As if you never leave here and things are never…hard? Real? The History Man had a wordburger: they’ll learn the hard way.”

Silence curled his lip.

_had it hard, all right_

_you too_

_mate you up and more_

_should have more stuff_

Silence had rolled his eyes at enough boasting and lusty promises to know he had to carry through on this immediately. He reached for his jacket.

Several minutes later, Rabbit was the astonished owner of a garrotte. It was the first true weapon she’d ever had. She stroked its sharp single wire while Silence explained his second gift. This was six nitrous oxide cartridges, each a finger’s length of metal pinched into a seal at one end. According to him, they were in case she needed to barter. In Gastown, one cartridge was worth a message, two a favour, and all six, a session with a flesh mechanic. Rabbit wondered if she was in debt to the Vuvalini healers in the Infirmary. They had always been very kind to her: but she’d take the nitrous to them and ask.

It was a dizzying pleasure, receiving new things. Rabbit watched Silence shunt his jacket aside. Despite this, he raised one index finger. “One more thing?” He nodded.

_still want to brand you_

With that, he leaned down to caress her right hip.

Rabbit trembled. Silence had shifted into all the avid compulsion he’d had last night, backed up with his new resolve. He had the shape in mind already, she could tell. His fingers were tracing its brief curves against her. It was slavish of her to want it. Against the ways of the new Citadel, it would be defiance to dare it. She weighed it in her mind, as she had weighed the chalk earlier. More chalk caught her eye. Silence had written so much that it was nearly a new layer of her bed. An idea stole into her, like one of her own chalked tendrils. That, after how they were tonight, she could say yes and still live the right way.

“I want it, too. Only yours. I don’t have to tell anybody else…”

Silence felt ablaze, between victory and black humour. He had what he wanted. Yet even her agreeing had a sidelong slide, like she was plotting to steal something with him. Maybe she was. The idea whetted his urges again. He leaned over and wrapped his other arm around her thin shoulders. She leaned her face against his knees, all trust. He slid from embracing to possessing, clamping a hand on the back of her neck. Before he could spread his legs, Rabbit turned her dark eyes up to him. “You were branded twice. How much will it hurt?”

Easily, Silence wrote:

_not the worst_

“Oh. Good,” Rabbit said. It would come to her later that the People Eater’s former slave might have other agonies to remember as the worst. For the moment, her lover’s face was brilliant with triumph.

_said I’d train you_

_start now?_

“Yes!” He slid an arm into hers, and drew her up into the bed of cushions.

One brush of Silence’s skin had Rabbit twining herself around him. Their first night, he’d been immaculately smooth. Now, almost all of him had a slight grit, a combination of storm sand and fine stubble. It made him more real. Almost all: his cock remained the sleekest flesh she’d ever touched. Rabbit buried her face against his neck, lips parting as she felt his pulse. It felt daring to stroke his back. Until she remembered what he’d asked her to do earlier, and let herself caress his chest again.

Silence felt Rabbit’s thin, sandwashed limbs as downy, still running hot. It was like the sun had baked itself into her skin during her Wretched years. She nuzzled into his neck, as charming as a tame rat. That made it easy to turn his face into her hair. The fine locks were silky, amazingly clean, scented again with a breath of sage. Her light, uneven breasts brushed him.

Rabbit bit him, softly. Her breath behind the bite was hot. “You liked this before?” Silence started to pull back, but she spoke again. “Maybe tap me once for no, twice for yes?” Immediately, he rapped her shoulder twice. Then he turned sharply in the pillows to see if she remembered what else he liked. When he pressed his empty mouth to her broken one, she did, sliding her warm tongue between his lips. After kissing her breathless, he reached for the chalk.

_show_

“You want to look at me.”

Silence tapped twice (this was already useful) and put about a half-meter of distance between them. Firmly, he took her wrists and turned Rabbit onto her back. He raised her arms over her shoulders, stroking the silky double tuft in each of her armpits, stretching her so her waist hollowed and her chest arced.  Rabbit had been shivering since he pulled her onto the bed. When he placed a hand on her left breast, she shuddered to her bones.

Silence had been so eager to take Rabbit down on their other nights that he hadn’t spent much time on her breasts. He did now, stroking and pinching each of her puffed nipples. Her left nipple seemed to be more sensitive, the entire small, tight breast peaking up to it. Her right breast was different: softer to his lips and teeth, fuller by a handful, enough to curve down. Which one did he like better? He still hadn’t decided when he reached down and parted her legs. Rabbit paused in her purring moans. After he'd fisted her last night, her cunt remained locked tight. Her appealing slickness was reduced to the finest sliver of wetness. But the wetness was there, encouraging.

Rabbit felt helpless, probed by his ruthless hands: prey pinned by his gaze. She’d had a lifetime of eyes sliding away from her, or taking in her mouth and that alone. It was her second time today, knowing herself seen, and it was strange. More, Silence was handling her the thorough way Rabbit examined the rare few things she called her own, the ones that felt like a part of her. It was delicious and unsettling. She could hardly tell what was arousal, tickling, or near pain as he touched her. When Silence turned to write again, she sat up, shielding her midriff with one arm to hide her ribs. She was relieved to use her own eyes. Until she read:

_get yourself off_

Silence felt confident asking for this. In his experience, it was the least taxing service a concubine could provide. And pain-shy Rabbit wouldn’t hurt herself. He opened his lubricant tin and handed it to her. A finger’s worth of clear petroleum gel remained after yesterday. When she didn’t move to take the tin, or speak, or start trembling again, he asked:

_know how?_

They were back where they’d begun their first day and night, with embarrassing questions and Rabbit wanting to die. She stammered, “Yes. I mean. Only since I’ve had this room.” Heedless of her self-defense with that, Silence dashed off:

_want to watch you_

_to remember_

It was like the brand, Rabbit thought. The idea of it shocked, but, because Silence was asking, she was drawn in. She took the tin. After a lifetime of never enough, she only swiped out half the remaining gel. Silence had no such reserve with the chalk.

_when I’m gone_

_every time you do, think of me_

Silence had received this order, one dark, potent hour. It had twisted him for years. He saw it sinking into her, too.

Rabbit lay down, taking the chance to half-hide her mouth in a cushion, for she wanted to smile. He was asking her to do what she'd do anyway. She stroked herself open, recalling the odd, beautiful old words for those parts: vulva, labia, clitoris. Her mouth opened against the fabric when she smoothed the gel onto herself. The slickness made her labia, shocked tight since last night, feel like part of her again. She slid her fingers deeper and hissed. After the wild sensations of the past few nights, she was more sensitive than before.

Silence could tell she’d never had an audience. Instead of watching him back, Rabbit’s eyes were closed, lashes long on her cheek. She curled in on herself, shielding her pleasure. There was no false, elaborate writhing, only her half-smothered breath, her moving hand, the faint sound of friction on moist flesh. It was another of her first times given over to him. He shunted cushions away to stretch alongside her. Rabbit glanced at him and forgot to hide her mouth at the sight of him gripping his harnessed cock. His constricted shaft gave her something to see. He worked himself hard, with long strokes for her to watch, wickedly pleased when she leaned up to see more.

Rabbit curled back into herself. He wasn’t even touching her and she was almost overwhelmed. All he had to do was be _there_ , eyes on, beautifully aroused. The thought of him reaching for her sent her hand burrowing harder. Her mind raced, fevered, through everything he might do. A vision flashed, him caressing her hip over a completed brand. Forbidden possession. Her body twisted at her soul’s hunger, spun into orgasm.

Silence saw her bury her face, hiding a sweet moan as her hips snapped. He released his hard-on to take her stilled hand and drag it up to his face. His reward was an intoxicating hit of sexual scent, traces of the petroleum gel under the light musk of quim. Smell meant far more than what his tongueless mouth couldn’t taste. He shifted his hand and worked himself mercilessly, feeling the shot swell in the base of his cock, tight against the leather straps. On Rabbit’s hand, the turn of skin where her thumb met her palm had captured her untainted wetness. He mouthed her there and rasped as coming convulsed him.  

Tired and short on fluids, he spilled more than shot. Not impressive, but another one of Silence’s perfect ideas seized him. He slid his stained fingers against Rabbit’s lips. Mimicking what he had done to her hand, she kissed his fingers clean as best she could. More, she stayed gentle when he probed inside. She only made a soft noise of protest when he stroked the roof of her mouth, finding the fine, troublesome aperture there. Her teeth half-bit by reflex. He withdrew, obscurely satisfied.

Rabbit had gone tense every way possible when he’d probed her mouth. But without his fingers, his bitterness fading on her tongue, she felt hungry. Before, he’d done everything to her. What they’d done tonight, they’d done together. She gave him a sidelong glance, and was caught. His impossible good looks wouldn't last, especially against the hammering post-apocalyptic sun. She, too, should look and remember. So she did, until she needed to blink. If she closed her eyes again, she'd fall asleep herself. She turned to look at the ceiling.

Silence stretched, never more relaxed. Rabbit's locked Citadel door and her adoring gaze both helped. When he lost the latter, he elbowed her. She didn't look away from the ceiling. “I never thought of this before. I can draw on my ceiling next. Something big. I’ll be finishing those maps for days on days, and that’s big and small at the same time.” She paused. “I think… something with stars.”

Silence liked the idea of Rabbit secure in Corpus’ office by day, working on her own drawings by night. She could stay where she needed to be, far safer than he would be in Gastown. He liked her not having any brand but his, while protected by the Citadel louts who, Rabbit claimed, didn’t want her. This reminded Silence of something he’d let go. He got Rabbit’s attention back and wrote:

_draw macks_

_saw him_

_he’s here_

Rabbit started half-upright. “Is he? He’s come back from the road?”

_on shuttle with him_

_he can’t talk either_

“No! He can’t talk, like you, and he killed the People Eater!”

Silence smiled brilliantly.

_could’ve had him easy_

_came to you instead_

“Really.”

_he’s with Imperator tonight_

_bet he’s her stud_

Rabbit went starry-eyed. “He killed the People Eater on the Fury Road and now the Imperator loves him!” At the thought of the Imperator having a silent, fierce lover of her own, she buried her smile back in the cushions.

Then, Rabbit remembered the Imperator’s desert face. The Wasteland must have a terrible need, to still call to Furiosa after she’d killed the Immortan. Everyone who’d been Wretched knew it was doom to go to the Wasteland alone. But to go with someone? That had been the first thing Rabbit had learned from the History People: the only way to get through this wrecked world was to not be alone. The Vuvalini had said Max was a road warrior who came and went from the Wasteland. With a road warrior who belonged there by her side, the steely Imperator would surely be the match of the Wasteland’s hunger. Rabbit turned aside from the idea of it, nestling up to the Gastown man in her Citadel bed.

Silence let her close the gap between them. He probed his own mind, his curious calmness with Rabbit beside him. Her gentle endurance and love had shown him a new way to be. His need of her had drawn him to compromise. He’d break down the factions of Gastown and the Wasteland the same way. And if Max could take out the People Eater without speaking, he saw no reason for his own muteness to stop him doing anything. He luxuriated in the misapprehension that, with Rabbit won, gaining his next desire, power in Gastown, would be just as excellent.   

The lantern’s flame faltered. Silence wrote while he still could.

_gtown crew in war tower_

_need to go back_

“Like I need to stay.”

_next time, will bring brand_

Rabbit sat up. “When will you come back?”

Silence rested his forehead in his hand for a moment, thinking. Rabbit saw the bitter tilt of his mouth.

_soon_

_if I live_

_all I need to do is_

_persuade Jade_

_get through night with Force_

_survive Gastown_

He concluded this by giving one finger an ironic spin in the air.

Rabbit said, fervently, “I know you’ll live. You’re a fighter.”

Silence took her face in both his hands. She had said the Immortan and the Bullet Farmer had paid death tribute each day. That rang true to him. The People Eater had taken his toll of death, too, killing enemies or rivals with days-long torments. Forced to serve and listen, Silence had known that, when his value ran down, he would be flayed and butchered. That had seemed faster, at least, than a slow death from disease - until the road warrior had made roadkill of the People Eater. Besides, the Citadel had given Silence a better way to pay death its due. Slowly, lingeringly, he kissed Rabbit, feeling the cannibal edge of her teeth, the cleft that showed the skull beneath her smile.

This was power. To shock the Citadel, to pique and win over the warped denizens of Gastown and its surrounds, to defy the filth and nihilism that had owned him. And, strangely, it was also freedom. To figure out how, he would need to hear all Rabbit’s stories again, and again. The answer was in them, but hard to pin down, like her own elusive soul. It was far easier to claim her body’s living warmth.

Rabbit drank in his hunger, glowing as his arms caged her. Her life’s work, helping keep the Citadel’s aqua-cola flowing, was going to be hard. Shielding young Spark would have its challenges, too. Both would be beset with politics and threats. But it felt like her soul had a refuge with Silence. His actions spoke what he didn’t write, couldn’t say. With him, she could stop fighting, be weak with desire, and stand up stronger for the respite. It was all so much more than she'd expected from her life.

She was pierced by a slight sadness, like seeing a maybe-satellite in the sky, remembering someone else whose care had changed her. Not Silence, nor the History Man, but someone before that. A woman, like herself. Inspired, she reached out to reassure Silence more. "When we were Wretched, the History Woman said to me, all the time, where there's life, there's hope. It means if you aren't dead, anything can happen. Even something good."

The lantern sputtered audibly, its light contracting. “It’s almost out,” Rabbit said. Neither could say who pulled the other into a final tight embrace. Silence broke it, slowly, to collect his clothes. Rabbit reached for her tool belt.

“I’ll walk you across. See, I’ve got my pass. And…here.” Rabbit thrust a mixed handful of chalk at Silence. He disappeared it into one of his jacket’s countless pockets.

Silence clipped the upper half of his two-part mask to his belt to go half-masked, matching Rabbit. Rabbit’s pass got them by the occasional guard. It was the easiest passage Silence had walked through the Citadel. Those in its dark, humid corridors in the heart of the night were the ones keeping it alive, like Rabbit.

Silence took it in. Gastown ran on its tech and petroleum: the Citadel was fueled by its people and plants.  The first time he'd been here, he'd thought everyone was a feral. He knew better now. They were just civilized enough to overreach their ideals soon. The Citadel’s plants didn’t care if their water was pumped up by the Immortan or the Sisters. They would fall dry without the gardening hands Silence had seen upstairs, the edgy alliance he had witnessed inside the Wellhead. Silence considered which half of that alliance would be best to slide onto his side, lubricated with some petroleum extras. He'd take care of Rabbit first and ask her who was the most jealous.

On the way, like the first time they met, Rabbit gave Silence water, filling his metal bottle. And she nattered. “Silence is a fine name. I bet they’ll be calling you _the_ Silence soon. Rabbit’s not good, I feel silly now, but I was twelve-thirteen when I picked it… I could pick another. I don’t know what. And History says it’s lucky, that even now nothing can kill all the rabbits. They tried, in the Before-time…for a brand, I can sign out a propane torch… I’ll send you a slate soon, the Pumps team was sending messages to the Refinery…remember when we were on this bridge the first time we met? It was good to have someone to go around with.”

Silence knew what she was thinking when she went quiet: they were both about to lose that.

They were well inside the War Tower when Silence stopped. He pointed at the turn to the barracks door. When Rabbit understood he’d arrived, she asked, “Should I come see you go? At the Treadmill?” Rabbit didn’t like the Treadmill Bay at the best of times. But Des had acted like Rabbit was supposed to do this.

Silence shook his head. He tapped his eyes, turned one of his hands into a chattering mouth. “People watch and talk?” Silence nodded. That did it. “I don’t like being looked at. Unless it's you. Here is good.” Rabbit paused and inhaled to relax, like the History Woman had told her, to clear her voice of gasps and lisps. “I lothe you.” It hadn’t worked. She gave her head a shake of frustrated misery. “The letter in the middle. I can’t sssay it, ether.”

_better than me, can’t talk_

_hate not talking with you_

“But you do talk to me?”

Silence reached out to claim her once more. Rabbit succumbed, twining her arms around his neck. Her masked mouth brushed his. Silence let his hands rove, finding all the small roughnesses of her arms and shoulders. He rested his hand on the back of her neck once more, for a moment. Rabbit melted against him. When he lifted his hand and drew away, Rabbit sighed, her beautiful eyes misty above her mask. His own hand felt empty. But going was the only way to return.

Rabbit took on the gracelessness of leaving. Her last words were sibilant from the strange paths her breath took through her skull. “I’ll wathe to you from the pipe bridge bethween the War Tower and the ssSeige Tower. I’ll be there from dawn…I promissse.” Silence felt her last word, drawn out long to avoid her lisp, coil and settle strangely inside his ribcage. Then, she slipped away, like the first time they’d met. The Citadel’s shadows took her.

Silence drifted into the barracks. Nobody else was there. He was strategically picking a bunk when Torcher stuck her head in. She glared around pointedly. “Where’s the others?”

Silence shrugged. Two mercenaries, ten Polecats, and four drivers were off having their own Citadel night. It was none of his business.

“What are you doing back?”

Silence tapped the metal Gastown sigil on his jacket and circled a hand around his face. He was keeping his part of his deal for the night, showing up early with his bait face.

Torcher only took half his meaning. “Fukushima. The _bait_ is the responsible one in the crew? This run!” Torcher thundered off.

When she was gone, Silence barred the barracks door to lock everybody else out. Satisfaction at that let him sleep, briefly but deeply. By the time he woke up again, no-one had knocked loudly enough to admit they’d been locked out. He undid the bar and re-established himself.

Seeing the rest of the crew straggle in was going to be amusing.


	33. At break of day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rabbit reconnects with the Citadel via her Citadel pup. Gastown rolls out. And Desperate plots her own Citadel future.

Rabbit tore herself away quickly. Completely wrung out, she decided to hurry to a corner she knew in this tower, a locking generator room. The wire cot tucked into the corner there was grim, but it was an hour closer than her own bed. Tonight, for sleeping, instead of fevered aching, a bed that had never had Silence in it would be far better. And she could be on the pipes at dawn, like she’d promised. She had a wonderful idea about that. She’d honour Silence with the Vuvalini’s treasured gesture for love and memory, to show she'd remember him while he was gone.

The History Man was right, Rabbit decided. Life was absurd. The strange turn that had given her Silence was proof. She could glimpse the ups and downs of a future linked to him. Lightning-struck nights and lonely ones. Quarrels like last night, reconciliations like tonight. His hard edge to shore her up against Citadel politics. Perhaps, with him, she might even dare children of her own. She thought about how much of it she’d see as visions, if Silence delivered on his promised extremes. When he did…

The History Woman had been right, too. Reaching beyond mere survival was worth it. Miss Giddy's actions, from her first, casual kindness to Rabbit, her time in the Vault, to her last terrible martyrdom had all flowed from the same well of history: that of women fighting to be people. Now the Citadel had a new life, led by the Sisters and Mothers. Furiosa, the strongest of them all, was marked to bring that to the Wasteland, sooner or later. Rabbit felt it might be sooner. And beyond them all, the world had the potential to live again. The History Woman had inspired the great ones who made it happen. For herself? Rabbit could remember, and do her best to see that what it had taken, the blood spilled on the sands, wasn't wasted.

Someone’s howl echoed down the stone. Rabbit clenched herself, skin prickling. She was alone in the War Tower on a storm night. Until she locked a door, that still had risks. Storm nights had been when the Mongrels gang held their Wretched blood fights. Now, this was when Citadel men took up their old sides and grudges again, bringing suppressed anger to the old fighting pits below. It seemed like everybody knew this happened. Yet, somehow, nobody mentioned it to the Sisters. Should she? Rabbit was too wretched with exhaustion to think about it more. And for the moment, she was alone, without anyone to watch her back.

Before she could detour into the back pipe corridors, she heard a young voice she knew. “Rabbit? Is that you?”

Rabbit turned to see a blanket-cloaked Citadel pup. Spark!

The child hopped over. “I couldn’t sleep. I told Ballard us pups get to stay up late on storm nights but he didn’t believe me!” Rabbit smiled beneath her mask. “He sent me to the bunks with the baby Pups but I’m not a baby. I was going to go visit Jumper.” Before Rabbit could say that this had been right and proper of Ballard, Spark added, “Then I saw you. You were trading paint!” Spark half-stuck out his tongue, alight with mischief.

 “I’m with sssomeone now,” Rabbit said, hastily. “A mate,” she added.

This gave Spark pause. “Ballard says he’s Jumper’s mate. Is yours going to move into your room like Ballard moved into Jumper’s room?” Spark tightened his blanket from a cloak to a cocoon.

“No,” Rabbit sighed. “We’re mateth, but he liveth in Gathtown. I’ll sssee him…” Sometimes? When we can? She settled on the hopeful: “Sssoon.”

Spark cheered up immediately. “Can he bring me a flamethrower? A real one? I asked Ballard ‘cause he’s from Gastown too. But he said no.” 

Rabbit shook her head. “No, no, Ballard came here from Gathtown but he’th a feral fighter.“

“No, he’s from Gastown. He learned how to blackthumb there, but he wanted to Be His Own Man. He said I shouldn’t tell anyone. But the Vuvalini say you should tell your Citadel mum _everything_ , ‘specially if a man says it’s a secret.” Happy at doing the right thing, Spark tackled Rabbit’s waist with a hug. “So can I have a flamethrower?”

“Perhapth. What ith I came and ssslept in your bunk with you now?” Rabbit asked, returning the embrace. “I’ll take you to sssee your bro in the morning. May’e if I drew a car for you, you could sssleep, too.”

“Yes! It’s this way!”

The only thing safer than a locked door in the War Tower was the company of a pup. She’d get away with doing one or two car drawings for Spark before she slept. And she’d be sure to get up in time to be on the pipes. There was nothing like having a child elbowing your kidneys to get you up at dawn.

She noted they were going by one of the water taps. “Do you want sssome aqua-cola?”

Spark hopped ahead, saying, “Not thirsty!”

Rabbit sighed with contentment.

* * *

That dawn, Silence was the most awake of the Gastown crew. Force wanted a bait face?  He’d get it. Silence stripped to the waist and abused Citadel water to wash himself clean. The fresh taste of the stuff gave him a pang, reminding him of Rabbit. He drew a double stripe of kohl around each eye. He even gave his chest piercing’s chain a quick buff before entering the Treadmill Bay, his jacket tucked firmly under one arm. 

Silence crossed the space with his slinkiest, oiliest saunter. In the centre, he paused, bending over slowly to adjust one of his boots. Straightening out, he stretched with a dramatic, soundless sigh. The bay went quiet. Then, metal crashed, War Boys collided, and a Treadmill stamper howled like a dingo. Silence ignored it all, finishing his unhurried walk over to the Treadmill drop.

To his irritation, nobody there was paying any attention to him. All eyes were on Force and the Imperator’s war second, the Ace, having it out. Their shouting at each other fell barely short of a fight. It sounded like someone had ratted out Force for carrying chrome, and the Citadel didn’t like it much.

Torcher barged over. “Leave it, Force! If you were stupid enough to get caught, I’m not backing you. Give it up.”

Force smacked the canister into the Ace’s waiting hand, snarling, “Fine! I could care less. The stuff’s not even for me.” Turning away from the Ace, Force caught that Silence had arrived. Silence held his breath. Would Force traitor him, in turn?

Force’s glare seared the air between them. He squared his broad, hard shoulders, and turned again... to put a hand on Brute’s chain.

Silence inhaled. Force’s quiet meant he still wanted to deal – and that Force, too, dealt clean. Silence weighed foregoing Force’s scene against reworking his own offer. Either approach had its advantages. He could stay distant as a first step towards power, or gain both Force's good will and some flashy barter to impress Rabbit. He decided he'd see how the Jade reacted to the Sisters’ letter – and to more. For he knew the Citadel's secrets, now. If Silence couldn’t barter that all the way up, as high as he could go in Gastown, he didn’t deserve to.  

Mangler elbowed him. “Looking flash, Si. What’cha do last night? Get Wretched married?”

It was easy to lie when you couldn’t talk. Silence nodded, smugly.

Koch groaned. “Did you _have_ to ask, Mangler?”

“At least somebody did! Now I know what I’ll do next time I’m here. Hoo hoo!”

Koch turned to the crew and shouted, “Bait’s back. Let’s move.”

Outside, the Citadel's towers and bridges split the dawn light into rich slabs, golden with airborne dust. From the bay’s opening, Silence saw that Rabbit had kept her promise. She was standing where she’d said she would, balanced between everything thanks to the pipes. A wide beam of light gilded her minute figure, brave against the towers and the hundred and fifty meter drop below.  Nobody stopped Silence from standing outside the vehicle for the descent. He stayed on the swaying platform, eyes locked on Rabbit. Falling felt impossible, as if he had gained some of her balance.

When the Treadmill moved, Rabbit seemed to see him. As Silence watched, she lifted one arm high and slow, the hand curled into a fist. She drew the fist down against her chest. Silence was thrilled at her cleverness, the message purely for him. She needed what they’d done, wanted him in her body again. He missed the rightness of her already. But if she could say so much when she was so small and far, with such a gap between them, being mates with her would work out... 

With his free arm, Silence made the gesture back to her.

* * *

Des stretched after most of a night’s sleep. The sun was up, outside, warming and brightening the shadows of her west-facing room. She was back on the same schedule as the rest of the Citadel.

Pleased with herself, Des contemplated the last four days. She’d done a down-low deal, used men as breeders, fighters as allies, played one against the other for protection and revenge. She’d found new backup and gained a sister – and an enemy. An enemy was far more compelling than some man being a bore, spouting lies. How had she gone so long without one? It made her feel alive.

And perhaps a child. Strange, that her consuming desire five days ago seemed incidental now. Thinking of it again made her want to find out. Since the healers couldn't  - or wouldn't - say yet, Des turned to what she knew. She drew out her new prize, the knife from Force. With its tip, she nicked her palm. She smacked her hands together for a blood mark and her fortune.

This time, the shape was hard to read: a blurred, blunt curl that made her think of a grub. It meant more to Des that blood kept oozing from the tiny cut. Children did drain you. Absently, she licked the little wound. Would she keep a child? If she couldn’t cope, there were others in the Citadel, kind, gentle, knowing, patient. All the things she wasn’t.

Feeling lively, Des got up and peered out her window. Above and below, the Citadel was hiving to life. She’d be rejoining it somehow by noon. The Treadmill was getting started early. She decided she’d go to the nearby Skullmouth and watch the Gastown crew leave. Then, she’d go to the mess hall and see if Rabbit had recovered from yesterday. Being torn up about the first one you liked was always the hardest.

When Des made it to the Skullmouth, half the Citadel’s Council was there. She counted Furiosa, Toast, Capable, Smith, Tidda, other Mothers. A few council men were off to one side, a scruffy assortment that included the History Man and some new feral bloke. Des looked at him twice. He was a full-life, and a bit of all right. Where’d he been over the past three months, to show up here now?

The women were handing around a salvaged longview. Smith was grumbling, “The Ace said the Gastown crew was everywhere but where they should be last night.” She passed the longview to Furiosa.

Furiosa’s mouth settled hard as she watched. “I want to be sure they’re gone. Then, we’ll get on with everything.” She handed it to the next watcher and shouldered a scoped rifle.

Tidda squinted at a pale figure. “Is that one of our Boys on the platform?”

Furiosa handed the longview to the feral bloke. Interesting that, without looking at him, Furiosa knew where he was standing. He muttered, “Uh-uh. That’s bait.”

Tidda frowned. “Such a cruel system.”

“ _Wordburger: what’s broken is healed by love only_ ,” said the History Man.

Furiosa and the feral shared a guilty start. Des narrowed her eyes. She watched as Toast, with a searching glance of her own, took the viewer from the feral. Toast said to History, “What’s that got to do with Gastown?”

“Oh…you never know what might happen.”

After a moment with the viewer, Toast declared, “This vehicle’s got the same number of people they came in with. Signal them down.”

Tidda let a fragment of mirror in her hand catch the sun, flashing. The Treadmill began to descend.

Des was pleased by their wariness. They should want Gastown gone. She felt a pang, nonetheless. Those Gastown men had been her breeders. She could have wrapped them around her smallest finger, if not for the one of them who’d almost been a match for her.

Blood still on her hands, Des edged into the Skullmouth. It was rare that Tidda and Smith crossed paths in the Citadel. If she could grab them both at the same time, Smith would back her up about what she wanted to do next. It was high time they took the Citadel’s old guards down a step with someone like Des amongst them. Des knew every line the Wasteland would use to try and worm in, every bribe that would tempt the low-down side of the Citadel.

Des had her eye on History, as well. He could come last. He never went anywhere quickly, any more. But she’d have his full attention when she said it was time he had her story. If anyone could twist it into something the Citadel could stand, it would be that sly old survivor.

Not that she’d tell him everything. She’d leave him wanting more, as you should do with men. As this Citadel should do, she decided, to hold its power against the hungry, thirsty, desperate Wasteland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And...that's...the story! Thank you all for giving this out-there tale and all its original characters a chance. This was my "let's explore Mad Max 'verse sexuality" story. Special appreciation to those who left kudos and comments, you GIVE ME LIFE. So so grateful and appreciative. Readers who didn't want to register with AO3 have been emailing feedback - bless! You can contact me old school at tyellas @ hotmail.com or thebyrchentwigges.tumblr.com. I've also enabled anonymous commenting.
> 
> The concluding comments have been expanded into their own essay: [Sex, Archetypes, and Mad Max. ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12229785) Here's an extract from the essay that ties directly into this story:
> 
> In the roaring cavalcade of Mad Max fanworks, this tale is only one rider, but it does hoon through the sexual territory of the Mad Max archetypes and edges. Max is important in both his mythic absence and rare presence. But to unleash all the sexual possibilities, _Citadel Nights'_ key characters remix archetypes from Miller’s Wasteland world. Winsome ferals, golden youths, wanderers willing to trade sex for survival. Masked men, chained giants, leather-bound pairs whose sole virtue is their love and devotion. War Boys and seasoned sharpshooters. Bait.
> 
> Where most social standards have been shattered, everything is possible. The Mad Max films encourage me to picture a post-apocalypse where sexual orientation is either non-existent or a historic relic. Breeding, fittingly, preoccupies one protagonist in _Citadel Nights_. Another one begins the story by using sex to reach for power. But their sexual encounters, as in all the Mad Max films, lead to human connection: for good or ill, inspiring alliances, trust, hatred, love.
> 
> To give the characters time and space to come together, _Citadel Nights_ is set inside and around one possible Citadel, after the Fury Road: a sole Green Place where human freedom and that enduring libido are combined. This renewing way of being is poised to clash with the wider, crueller Wasteland — and to change it, too. For, as Nico Lathoris says of Max and his coming to care for other people in Fury Road, "What's broken is healed by love only."


	34. Coda: Kink index

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you came to this story because you were following a kink tag, this is for you. Some spoilers for the story.

In general...

  * More vanilla chapters: 12, 22, 26
  * Mlm chapter: 4, has transman top
  * Wlw chapters: 12, 31
  * Rough sex, dirty talk, mouth kink, body horror overlapping with sex: any explicit chapter not noted as vanilla will have at least one of these elements.



Specifics...

  * Anal Sex: 13 (het), 23 (het/female top), 31 (femslash)
  * Breeding: 3, 7, 8, 11, 17
  * Bondage: 23
  * Cunnilingus: 12, 31
  * Femdom: 23, Des is pretty bossy all the time
  * Femslash: 12, 31
  * Fisting: 21
  * Gun Kink: 11
  * Lactation: 7, 8, 26
  * Light Dom/sub: 4, 8, 32
  * Oral Sex: 4, 9, 11
  * Sex Work: 3, 7, 23, 31
  * Size Difference: 17 (big male), 26 (big female)
  * Recreational Drug Use: 21
  * Teratophilia: 23
  * Trust Play: 9, 13, 32 
  * Voyeurism: 7, 17, 26, 32



**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Soul's Water](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8780194) by [Tyellas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas)
  * [Sex, Archetypes, and Mad Max](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12229785) by [Tyellas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas)




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